YOU look at this scene from a distance and his life is paradise. Jimmy
Bullard, a Premier League footballer, is standing on the 16th tee at his
home club, at the Wisley, in West Sussex, it is a wonderfully sunny
afternoon, a river gently wiggles its way through the course, the green on
this short par four is reachable, and Bullard has driver on his mind.
He is a scratch golfer and damned competitive at that. He looks at the bunkers
lined up on the right side of the fairway, like a series of ramparts
blocking his path to the green. End up in one of those and four becomes a
tough score.
So what to do? Bullard reaches for his bag, pulls the cover off his driver and
stands over his ball. Like most men whose game is mostly natural, he doesn’t
spend any time over this shot. Just puts the club behind the ball, takes it
back and, swoosh, it’s gone. To carry the bunkers, he needs to keep the ball
in the air for more than 300 yards. It sails high over everything, lands on
the front of the green and rolls to a stop on the left edge. He takes a swig
from a Red Bull can, gets down in two putts, and makes his birdie
comfortably.
How easy to watch this slightly built man, who has hardly had a golf lesson in
his life, and conclude that he has it made. There is another side to his
sporting life and if you’d have eavesdropped on his conversations with Jim,
his dad, and Lyn, his mum, yesterday morning you would have formed a
different picture.
He rings his parents on every match day. If Lyn answers, he knows his Dad’s
out and he will have to call him on his mobile and though they don’t talk
much on the morning of matches, he wouldn’t feel right if he hadn’t spoken
to them. Yesterday morning he would have told them the game against
Manchester City was the biggest of his career so far and how he believed
Fulham’s season was still salvageable.
Yesterday’s game was his 13th since his return from a horrific knee injury
that kept him out of the game for 16 months and might have cost him his
career. Since his return, the team has had some good results but too many
bad ones. The stench of relegation seeps from the walls of the Fulham
changing room but Bullard doesn’t want to consider the possibility until the
possibility becomes reality. So Saturday morning he told his parents if they
beat City and if other results went their way, then next week’s home match
against struggling Birmingham could be decisive. Before then, Fulham had won
just five Premier League games this season and the team was hanging on to
its Premier League life by the thinnest thread.
And then yesterday afternoon, it happened exactly as he would have hoped, even
if it did not seem that way from the beginning. Fulham’s remarkable
comeback, from 2-0 down after 20 minutes, to snatch a last-minute victory at
City, coupled with Birmingham conceding two late goals to Liverpool means
that thread just got thicker and all attention turns to Saturday’s
six-pointer.
Yesterday’s win will not stem the flow of stories linking Bullard with a move
to Sunderland, Tottenham, Newcastle or Aston Villa should Fulham lose their
Premier League fight. It would leave the midfielder with a tough decision
but that’s only if you’re looking from the outside. Through his eyes, it’s
simply straightforward.
It goes back to the childhood that made him the person he is, though he spent
the first six years of his life in Newham, East London, the family then
moved to Bexleyheath in Kent and that’s where his memory begins. Waking at
half-past five in the morning, picking up the rucksack he packed the evening
before, getting the can of maggots from the garage, the sweetcorn from the
fridge, bread from a press in the kitchen and then off to the nearby river
Cray.
“The maggots, sweetcorn and bread were for bait, we’d want to be the first on
the river and you wouldn’t think of packing a lunch. No time for that. Dad
would stay with me until a little after 10, then he’d go off and have a pint
and return in the afternoon. I’d fish till dusk. You catch all kinds, of
course: fish, roach, pike, everything. Loved it, I did. Great days.
“I cross the river now when I’m going to my parents’ house and I see the
places where we fished. Everything looks so much smaller now, the river, the
banks, and everything is overgrown. I wonder if there’s as many fish there
now as there used to be.” Jim Sr, was a builder with a painting and
decorating business and loved golf as much as fishing. “Before I bring you
to play,” he told his son, “You must first learn the game by carrying for
me.” Knowing no better, the boy thought it was an honour and on a quiet part
of the golf course, his Dad would let him have a swing with his driver, the
kid was hooked.
But football was their game. Jim Sr and little Jimmy were committed West Ham
fans, and though his Dad never wanted to put too much pressure on the boy,
he thought the kid was a natural. He told Jimmy he could do things that the
boy hardly imagined and they both believed he would get a YTS contract at
Millwall after playing for the club’s under15s.
The letter came in the post. “I couldn’t open it, my Dad had to do it. He read
it out, they didn’t want me. There were lots of tears and it was the first
of many knockbacks I would have. Dad said I would get there and I didn’t
want to give up, so I joined the nonleague team Dartford but couldn’t really
break into their first team. Everyone told me the same thing: ‘Jimmy, you’re
size is against you’. I thought it was unfair because I knew I was going to
get stronger. They couldn’t see what three or four years training was going
to do for me.” And so Jimmy Bullard began his journey. From Dartford to
Gravesend, then the chance to make his name at his beloved West Ham. The
cover on his childhood duvet had been claret and blue, the pillow covers
were also from the West Ham shop and on his first days training at the club,
little Jimmy was pitted against Frank Lampard in a murderous one-on-one
exercise that almost killed him. Well, he slept soundly that night.
He was three years at West Ham and spent twice as much time in the gym as
Lampard or Rio Ferdinand, but he could never get anywhere near as big as
they were. “When a manager looks at you, he sees your size, not your
strength, and I was still a stick. At the end of three years it just flew
by, I needed first-team football and had to leave West Ham.”
His Dad made the calls and got trials at Norwich, Leyton Orient, Gillingham
and Peterborough. It was Peterborough’s Barry Fry who saw beyond Bullard’s
diminutive physique and offered him a chance to be a professional
footballer. For a London boy who had lived at home all his life, it seemed a
big move.
There were other considerations. He and his girlfriend, Diane, didn’t know
what to do. They thought they should go to Peterborough together and try to
make a go of it. Their parents were concerned. “You and Diane should go,”
his Dad said. “It’ll make a man of you.” They loved Peterborough and he
enjoyed his relationship with Fry. “You were an empty shirt today, Jim,” Fry
would say when he didn’t perform.
There were more days when he did perform and the offer from Wigan was not a
surprise. “I’ve got Paul Jewell on the phone here, Jim. He wants to take you
to Wigan, be a good opportunity for you, son, they’re a good side,” said
Fry. When Jimmy said he was interested but not sure what to do, Fry told him
Peterborough needed the £275,000.
He spent three years at Wigan, helped them reach the Premier League, was a
star through the team’s first season at the highest level and then returned
to London when Fulham paid the £2m necessary to prise him away from the
northern club. “The best £2m we ever spent,” said Fulham’s then manager
Chris Coleman. Four games into his Fulham career, he dislocated a kneecap
and destroyed the ligaments that held everything together. “It’s like
somebody set off a bomb in there,” the surgeon Richard Steadman said after
the first of two major operations.
It took Bullard 16 months to return and then to a team in the depths of an
almost impossible relegation fight. But he knows how he wants to deal with
this. “I owe so much to Fulham for what they have done for me,” he said. “I
have played only 16 games for them and even though it’s flattering that
other clubs are interested, I don’t want to leave this football club. When I
was going through the bad times I was getting sacks of mail, I reckon there
was more than 10,000 letters and e-mails and some of the things people wrote
were unbelievable.
“When I was doing rehab, the people at Fulham told me not to rush it. They put
me before the club. That had a big effect on me and I have no wish to leave.”
First learn your trade
Jimmy Bullard was a relative latecomer to league football, signing for
West Ham, aged 19, and failing to make a fi rst-team appearance in the
three years he was there. Bullard’s fi rst job had been as a
painter-decorator. He’s not the only footballer to have started with a
trade:
Bob Wilson The goalkeeper was stopped from signing for Manchester
United because his father didn’t think it was the right job for him. Instead
he went to teacher training college and initially played for fi rst
Wolves, then Arsenal as an amateur
Stuart Pearce Rejected an offer from Hull to play for nonleague side
Wealdstone while training as an electrician and plumber. He joined Coventry
City in 1983, aged 21, and Nottingham Forest in 1985, advertising his
services in the club programme
Ian Wright Worked as a plasterer in south London until Crystal Palace
offered the then 22-year-old a two-week trial. Five years later, he was
playing for Arsenal and England
Iain Dowie Rejected by Southampton as a 16-year-old, Dowie went on to
study engineering at the University of Hertfordshire. On graduating, he took
up a job at British Aerospace, while playing for Cheshunt then Hendon. It
was at the latter that he was spotted by Luton, who signed him when he was
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