Gazza

[Gene_Clark 12]

Again, pm me. Lets stick to wild accusations of homosexuality against a man knocking on deaths door eh?

 

Why would I want to PM you?

 

I suppose I could explain how apostrophes should be used for both omission ("Let's" not "Lets") and possession ("death's" not "deaths"), but other than that I'm at a loss what you want me to send you a message about.

[luckyluke 2]

As a player he was a genius and a hero. As a man he is a mess. Unfortunately too many "friends" have used him over the years for their own benefit and when he most needs loyalty, support and love they're not interested. How in fuck's name any genuine human being could think for a second that he was in any fit state for him to do an after-dinner speech is ridiculous. My views on Gazza as a man have been well documented on here over many years but I feel desperately sorry for him. We all know it's just a matter of time, because due to a combination of personality, poor advice, gold diggers and freeloaders it's far too late for anyone to help him in any meaningful way.

 

I think it's incredibly difficult to decide where exactly the blame falls in such a huge, multifactorial clusterfuck but I think it correct to say that society （including Gazza) has definitely failed Himself

[Kitman 2207]

Perhaps if Gazza had gone to Man Utd instead of Spurs it would all have ended differently....

[Tooj 17]

Perhaps if Gazza had gone to Man Utd instead of Spurs it would all have ended differently....

I think the Ferguson of that era would have lost patience with him and kicked him out.

[Gene_Clark 12]

Perhaps if Gazza had gone to Man Utd instead of Spurs it would all have ended differently....

 

I'm sure that the company of Bryan Robson, Paul McGrath & Norman Whiteside would have kept him clean & sober....

[sweetleftpeg 0]

I'm sure that the company of Bryan Robson, Paul McGrath & Norman Whiteside would have kept him clean & sober....

 

Exactly. That Man Utd squad had by far the biggest drinking culture in the country at that time. Paul McGrath's autobiography is a real eye opener (while we're recommending good football books). Gazza would have got wankered far more if he'd joined them, all they did was drink.

[Kitman 2207]

I think the Ferguson of that era would have lost patience with him and kicked him out.

 

You're probably right

[PaddockLad 17643]

Sad to say, two mates were working on the lift in the block of flats where he lives in Boscombe before Christmas. They said he was staggering around outside his penthouse at 10 in the morning in his dressing gown pissed out of his head waiting for taxi drivers to deliver his whisky. He also asked my mates to get him a few bottles. They're good lads and declined to err "help" him. So sad. He's had periods of being sober before so maybe this is just a pattern, maybe someone will give another crack at rehab. He was apparently doing well at the clinic he attended down here but looks like he's slipped off the wagon again. He probably needs the money from after dinner speaking to pay for his lifestyle, cant see there being anything left from his playing days (or after the agents and ex wife have finished with him)

[Kitman 2207]

It's all very sad. He looked fucking terrible in that picture

[catmag 337]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272997/Paul-Gascoigne-Slurring-shaking-swearing-stage-pathetic-face-Gazza-fallen-soccer-hero.html#axzz2JsZ6K8CF

[ohhh_yeah 2991]

Sad to read about this latest bit. Utterly depressed after seeing the actual video of it.

[2bias 3]

Maybe beyond help now. A classic example of not being able to move on from sport, you hear a lot of ex pros saying you need something out of sport once it's all over.

[Kid Dynamite 7169]

Last chance Saloon. Most people aren't lucky enough to have a bunch of millionaire mates who can pay for a flight and rehab stay in the states for you. Time for him to choose to live or die really

[Dr Gloom 22143]

How many times has he been through rehab though? Can only see it ending in tears. He doesn't have the support network needed to survive I fear.

[Dr Gloom 22143]

Though it would be hard not give up on him in truth.

[Holden McGroin 6783]

I cant bring myself to watch the video.

 

Surely beyond help now.

[Happy Face 29]

Though it would be hard not give up on him in truth.

 

Exactly.

 

Find all the stick his cohorts get baffling when Gazza is the one that relapses every single time, no matter who his mates are at that time.

 

People lay blame at the kids or wife of a fella who has clearly never been there for them.

 

Appreciate his greatness on the pitch, his problems off it are his own.

[PaddockLad 17643]

Someones just said Gary Lineker,Piers Morgan,Ronnie Irani and Chris Evans have laid out the cash in for his latest stab at rehab....is this err "trending" in the twattersphere?....

[Kid Dynamite 7169]

They have, although Ronni Irani probably earns less than some folk on here the know nowt Vurnon Kay sounding cnut. Fair play if true but he was on the radio yesterday telling all and sundry he had done it which detracts from it imo

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3963]

They have, although Ronni Irani probably earns less than some folk on here the know nowt Vurnon Kay sounding cnut. Fair play if true but he was on the radio yesterday telling all and sundry he had done it which detracts from it imo

 

Irani probably donated the stamp which they used to put on the envelope the tickets were in.

[PaddockLad 17643]

They have, although Ronni Irani probably earns less than some folk on here the know nowt Vurnon Kay sounding cnut. Fair play if true but he was on the radio yesterday telling all and sundry he had done it which detracts from it imo

 

Absoloutely, done for his own ego than any real concern for Gazza. Piers Morgan? some good PR for a change?...the other two I can understand..

[mustyelbow 0]

gutted to hear seen him by central station and lent him a ciggie then he gave me 2 back

[Happy Face 29]

lent him a ciggie then he gave me 2 back

 

Fucking leeches like you taking him for everything he's got.

[Meenzer 15716]

Nothing black and white about Gazza

 

George Caulkin

February 07 2013 12:02PM

 

 

Pink, pudgy and dipped in chip-fat – I remember Paul Gascoigne. Hair shorn above the ears, gurning grin where teeth should be, shorts too tight – I remember him. As ugly as sin and as sexy as it, too, because with a ball at his boot-tips and running at full tilt, I’ve never seen football so muscular or beautiful. I remember Paul Gascoigne and, by God, I love him.

 

Close to the touchline, an off day at St James’ Park, I remember a shout of exasperation from nearby: “Pull your finger out Gazza, man, you fat bastard.” And he did, first one finger and then another, holding them aloft in a rigid V, with a “f*** off” and a wink thrown in. I don’t recall complaints to stewards, demands for an arrest, front-page exposés or questions in the House. I remember laughter.

 

I remember seeing him sprint forward from the centre circle. He looked too big for the pitch, let alone his strip, but when he moved, the ungainly became poetic, although it was a violent sort of artistry – elbows and sharp edges – that took him around, past and occasionally through defenders. It looked like human bagatelle, the ball clacking between his feet, and yet somehow under control, the only aspect of his life that was.

 

The North East could not contain him, but talent drained away frequently back then and when he moved from Newcastle United to Tottenham Hotspur, an axis shifted with him. He was such a draw, such a force. When he burst into Sir Bobby Robson’s England squad and refused to be ignored, I remember feeling differently about my country; it wasn’t just Thatcher’s country, it was Gazza’s. And he was ours.

 

That era of Robson’s; Gascoigne, Beardsley, Waddle, Robson, men from a region of coal, steel and shipbuilding. That felt like some sort of affirmation. I remember those tears – “the tears that watered the Turin pitch” as Sir Bobby would refer to them – because for people who adored football it brought a wider acceptance that our sport could bring emotion of a warming kind, even if the source was sadness. He brought change.

 

I remember a kind of role-reversal, Sir Bobby wiping moisture from his face when, in his last, ailing months, he spoke of Gascoigne’s mountainous heart, of how he’d tried to buy his former manager a disability scooter, an absurd act of generosity that he could ill afford. “Paul cried in the service of his country, but it’s far too soon for us to be shedding tears for him,” Robson said then. It still is.

 

“Newcastle saw the start of him, red-faced and chubby though he was back them,” Sir Bobby once wrote. “He could head the ball, pass it, dribble with it, shoot and he’d train all day. He drove his managers mad, of course, because he never lost that precociousness, his cocky stupidity, his willingness to do anything in search of a quick laugh. But he remained so popular because he was such an innocent.”

 

I’ve read about the daft stories. The sweet and heart-melting ones, like when he reported for training at Newcastle as a kid, found nobody there because the session had been cancelled and went carol singing to earn his bus fare home. The daftness that became a mania, a compulsion, the addictions which left his body wracked and mind addled. But I do not know if they are fact or legend and do not remember them, because I was not there.

 

I do not condone the lapses, the appalling behaviour, but do my best not to offer judgments on the private lives of others, for the simple reason that I wouldn’t want judgment on mine. There are exceptions to that, because I’m a hypocrite – Nile Ranger makes my every pore ache – but I try to disassociate Paul Gascoigne the player from whatever “Gazza” now represents.

 

I’ve written before about the temptations Tyneside offers. I grew up with footballers and flirted on the fringes of that extraordinary life and can remember how it felt to have a drink in your hand with faces turned in your direction, how money and alcohol and testosterone and danger can provide a headlong rush. How being close to home can also feel like Hollywood. It was a blast; less so, when I woke up in a hospital, scabbed and reeking

 

I’ve been thinking about Gascoigne this week, and it is only partially because of the latest series of photographs and tales, the drinking, and the slurring and another last chance. I thought of him because of Danny Graham, the centre forward who joined Sunderland from Swansea City last month and has been newsworthy because of his boyhood allegiance to Newcastle and the careless way he once expressed it.

 

I thought of how a career, a life, can be shaped by one action, one comment, one sip, one grave error or, in Gascoigne’s case, one horrendous tackle which led to a compendium of grief. “God knows what he would have gone on to achieve if he hadn’t flung himself so recklessly at Gary Charles, but I think people would have talked about him in the same breath as George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, Kenny Dalglish,” Robson said.

 

The connection with Gascoigne is tenuous, at best, but you don’t always know what sets something off and I like the fact that Graham wanted to come home, that he pushed for it to happen in the knowledge that it might cause himself a ripple of difficulty. A story does not have to be set in stone, not yet, and an indiscretion about Sunderland in a Watford fanzine does not have to be his; I wish him a bucketload of goals.

 

It is difficult not to think about Gascoigne, because he still forms a frame of reference. As Ian Botham’s absence hung over England’s cricket team until the Ashes were claimed and a different standard set, Gascoigne is still the comparison we make; his potential and personality linger. When Jack Wilshere’s performance against Brazil is examined, it is for echoes of his predecessor.

 

Sir Bobby was a mentor and became a friend, but I’ve never met Gascoigne. I came close to it last May when the statue of Sir Bobby outside St James’, looking out towards the city and Co Durham, was unveiled. He was being interviewed there and I wanted to say something, about the memories he had given, but shied away. He looked shaky and wizened and I doubted he craved saccharine from a journalist.

 

As Gascoigne has diminished, he has continued to nourish my profession and I do not like that. This is not much of a blog and I apologise for it, because I have nothing to add about alcohol or refueling or treatment centres. I hope he gets well, but cannot begin to understand what responsibility lies with him or where others might have intervened. I’m not interested in casting blame. As I’ve made plain, tediously, I just remember him.

 

Gascoigne’s narrative is there, in black and white, and it cannot be altered, but I remember him from before then, shirt streaked in the same shades, sun-lamp tanned and shiny, barging across the grass, boisterous and bossy and delicate. I would give a lot to stop the clocks and plot a course back in time for one more of those moments when he hinted at unshackled possibility, but less for his sake. Him doing his job made me want to do mine.

[henda11 0]

It's sad, watching someone you grew up idolising become such a mess. He needs help and support from real friends. I'm quite sure he has some bad people around him who are after a little bit of money. It's sad