Small Talk: Tony Cascarino (original) (raw)

Morning Tony, how's life?
Pretty good, Small Talk. I'm in Monte Carlo playing poker, so it could be worse.

It certainly could. Ex-footballer playing poker though - it's bit of a cliché nowadays isn't it?
Yeah, there are certainly a few of us doing it now: I've seen Tomas Brolin on tour, Teddy Sheringham plays a lot... I think more and more sportsmen will become interested to be honest, because it's time-consuming and we have so much time on our hands when we finish.

Is that what you found?
Definitely. When I finished playing, because of the system in France where you get a percentage of your salary when you finish work, I was getting £3,000 a month. So I'm sitting in France in my apartment in France earning £3,000 a month picking my nose and thinking "what am I gonna do with myself?" I had a couple of media things going on, but I enjoyed playing poker and thought "maybe I should go out and learn", so I took a year out to go and play. I lost about 70, 80 grand in that first year but that was my learning curve, so for me that was the best 80 grand I ever spent. Now I know I can play, I know I can make a profit. Last year I made double that - I made 150 grand playing poker.

Crikey, so which is a bigger rush: scooping a big pot or bursting the back of the net?
Well, people always used to say scoring a goal is better than making love, but I always said "no, it's more like masturbation", because it's more like a release of tension than you actually enjoy it. My missus says she's never seen me so happy as after I won an invitational event in St. Kitts in the Caribbean. I won $100,000, and that was an enormous buzz, I got a big kick out of it. I think the biggest thing for me is that after that I was also respected by my peers as being a good poker player.

You talked in your book about struggling with the demons and the loneliness of football, but isn't poker even more lonely?
Umm... No, I had a lack of confidence as a footballer, that was one of my biggest problems. I don't feel that in poker because you can get lucky. I know confidence is everything when you're playing poker too, but at times you can just be blasé. I've seen players who just want to get knocked out of competitions and play terribly, but get very lucky and have huge chips. In football there's no luck, you have to do it yourself.

Well, David Nugent may beg to differ, but getting back to football, is it true that Crockenhill FC flogged you to Gillingham for a set of tracksuit tops and some corrugated iron?
Um, no. When I went to Gillingham, Crockenhill didn't want money for me, so Gillingham - as a gesture - offered some training equipment, tracksuits, stuff like that. It's one of those stories, it's just been exaggerated over time, going from ten tracksuits to a few cones, and all the rest. It's like the two loaves and five fishes in the Bible. That's what I call it: the two loaves and five fishes.

And we thought it was Robbie Fowler whom they call God... So are these stories of you scoffing Wimpy before your first home game for Gillingham all lies too?
[Laughing] No, that was real. We were playing Wimbledon at home, it was the third match I was going to play for Gillingham and I was travelling down by train from Sidcup where I lived. In them days you only had two subs, and they always named a fourteenth man in case someone came down with an illness or got hurt on the morning of the game. So I was the fourteenth man, and I arrived at Gillingham station about 10 to one, and I'm thinking, "I don't really know what to do with myself now". I didn't know the players that well, so I didn't want to get there early, so I went into Wimpy and ate a double cheeseburger and chips, and then a Knickerbocker Glory. Then I get to the stadium about 10 to two, and I get named as a substitute. So I'm thinking, 'Oh my God', I'm thinking I might have to go be sick in the toilet, I'm feeling absolutely bloated. Then after 15 minutes a midfielder has a bad injury, and gets carried off, and I had to go on. We ended up winning 6-1 and I scored on my home debut. I was feeling absolutely wretched but all I could think was, "that's my pre-match meal" - double Wimpy and chips and a Knickerbocker Glory.

It's not like that nowadays, Tony - managers like to know exactly what their players are eating...
[Interrupting] It's a load of absolute bollocks most of it. I think if you do things right 90% of the time, day-in, day-out, then you can do what you want. It's like an odd drink, it couldn't do you any harm. It's when you do things the other way round - 90% bad and 10% good - that you have a problem. I've had fish, I've had steak, I've had double Wimpy and chips, I've had all sorts of pre-match meals, and other than that one time none of them has made me feel any better or worse. It's a myth.

Do you think players now really are behaving much better though? Do you think they're going a whole season without a drink?
No, they're not, and why should they? As long as they're doing it in small doses, it doesn't matter. Going out on Wednesday and having a few pints, that's not going to make you unfit. You're training every day for two hours. One of my ex-bosses said to me, and it was absolutely true, that if you're going to go and have a drink you've got to be fit to drink, meaning exactly that. If you're going to go out and have a drink you've got to be fit, because you've got to be able to take it and still train.

Just like Arsenal in the days of the Tuesday club, eh?
You'd love to send Arsenal out on a drink now wouldn't you? It would do them a bit of good.

Indeed. But didn't you enjoy the best years of your life when you cut back on all that in France?
It's true that you didn't get the opportunities to go off the rails. For our Christmas party we all just went for a pizza and by 10.30pm everyone's gone home; in England the party would involve, you know, getting dressed up, going to a nightclub. But it comes back to what I said to you earlier about being professional 90% of the time and ill-disciplined for 10% - when I was in England I was maybe being ill-disciplined for 80% of the time and good for 20%. My lowest weight in France was about 6lb lighter than I ever was in England, and it made a huge difference. At 31 I decided to be a really good pro. I still had the odd session, but I was just a really good pro, and that allowed me to play until I was 38.

Do you regret not working harder earlier in your career?
No, I don't regret it. One of the proudest things in football I've achieved, and I haven't won nearly anything, is that I was a guy at 31, who was on a slippery slope, who could quite easily have just drifted down the leagues and dropped out of football and be forgotten. Instead I turned my career around at 31, and there's very few people who've done that. And that taught me a lot about life in general, the way you do things, the way you act.

Fair enough, but let's move on to more serious business. Other than dodgy pre-game Wimpys, what's the daftest thing you've ever done?
Probably the World Cup 94 qualifier against Northern Ireland away. I was a substitute and I forgot to put my game shirt on. We warmed up in t-shirts, and for some unknown reason when I got back into the dressing room I just put a tracksuit over the top and just forgot my shirt. It was only when Jack Charlton told me to get warmed up, I took me top off and I had a white t-shirt on. We were losing 1-0 and he was furious, so I said to David Kelly: "Give me your shirt", and Jack says: "you stupid fucker, he gives you his shirt and we'll get chucked out of the tournament, you daft bastard". Luckily for me, while all this was going on, Alan McLoughlan scored, so he went from rage to ecstasy, and by the time it had all calmed down our physio Charlie O'Leary had run to the dressing room and had my shirt back out. I mean I've done some daft things in my career - I even forgot my boots once when I was at Millwall and had to borrow a pair from Steve Anthrobus - but that was up there with the best of them. Our World Cup was on the line, and I'm standing there with my t-shirt on.

What's the strangest request you've ever had from a fan?
Um, it's normally tickets.

You've never had someone ask for a lock of your hair, a pair of pants?
Well, not for me. For somebody else ...

Eh?
When I was with Ireland I was in a room with Andy Townsend and this girl's started shouting up to our window: 'Andy, Andy, Tony, Tony - where's Jason Mcateer?' So Andy says 'he's in the next room' and they say 'run back and throw us his shirt'? I opened his door and there was no football shirt but there was a pair of shorts and a jockstrap, so I picked up the jockstrap, which had a huge skid mark on it, and threw it out the window. And this girl was thrilled. We were all in bits. Some fans will have anything.

Classy. What was the last CD you bought?
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication

Hmm, it's a bit 1998, but we'll let you go. Favourite Film?
I have about five. I go between the Deer Hunter and the Godfather Two.

Scarlett Johansson or Paris Hilton?
Paris Hilton [pause as Small Talk gawps at Cascarino's stunning decision]. Because she's rude.

What would you put in Room 101?
[Long deliberation] If I was going in the room I'd want a telly I suppose. [Slightly depressed] Put a telly in there.

Eh, no, this is something you can get rid of!
Oh right, okay - so it can be anything I want to get rid of (increasingly excited). Ken Livingstone. Because I drive in London every bloody day, and every bloody day I pay the congestion charge, and every day I sit in traffic. And I hear this gobshite going on about how he's making London easy to get into. Ken Livingstone without a doubt.

Who would win a fight between a lion and a tiger?
[Chuckles] No idea, but ... lions are bigger aren't they?

Depends on the lion, Tony.
I suppose you'd have to say the lion, only because he fought Tarzan and he... wait, the lion lost to Tarzan... [Pause] Probably the tiger then.

A considered verdict. And finally, can you tell us a joke?
[After lengthy consideration] Yeah, OK. I've got one that's very me. It's a bit silly though.

Small Talk would expect nothing less.
OK, so it's 3am and this guy's at home asleep with his wife when suddenly the doorbell goes, waking him up. So he looks at the clock and thinks "who on earth's that going to be 3 am?" But the bell goes again so he gets up and he goes downstairs, and he answers the door and there's this guy standing there. So he's like: "What do you want ringing my doorbell at 3am?" And the guy is all apologetic and he says: "I'm so sorry, but I really need a push."

Now the first guy's pretty angry at this point: he's tired, he's got work in the morning so he tells the guy where to go, closes the door on this stranger and goes back to bed. But when he gets there his wife asks him who it was, and when he tells her she gets really upset, shouting: "How could you do that; maybe that man had his wife with him, maybe they have kids, maybe they need to go the hospital." So the guy gets back up and he goes downstairs and he opens the door, but he can't see the guy any more, and it's dark, so he just shouts out "You still out there mate? Whereabouts are you?" And the answer comes back: "I'm just back here on the swing."

Magnificent, Tony. And so appropriate for our family audience, too. Cheers for your time.
No worries, Small Talk.

Small Talk spoke to Tony Cascarino at the Grand Final of the European Poker Tour - Europe's richest poker tour, in Monaco. Tony is sponsored by Littlewoods poker (see www.littlewoodspoker.com), while the EPT is hosted exclusively by PokerStars.com. See www.europeanpokertour.com for more details or find out results, more about the top players and how to qualify for EPT events at www.pokerstars.com