Donkey-Jibes, Drink and a whole lot more (Tony Adams)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Tony Adams
Date:	25/09/01 (495 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strong Player, Great Character

Disadvantages: None

Oh how this is going to shock you all, you see although I am an avid follower of Grimsby Town Football Club as well as constantly willing Manchester United onto winning the Premiership and many over titles, the Player whose career I´ve constantly followed doesn´t play for either of these clubs, in fact its widely regarded that he plays for one of Manchester Uniteds biggest rivals - Arsenal, so who am I talking about?, who else but Tony Adams.

I remember well when I first started playing football, I was tall for my age and was always thrown in goal or defence, thing is I never had the desire to play in goal and was a tad slow to be a full-back - so it was probably written in the stars that my best talents would be at Centre-Half, once this was realised I started watching the then `first division´ football Centre-Halves with great care always taking notes and trying to improve my game - one day I can remember turning around to my father and pointing at someone on screen...... "Whos that Dad?" I asked intrigued at the skills I was seeing, "ooooh its that donkey Tony Adams" was the reply I got as I watched Adams rise above yet another striker and head the ball clear, I´d found my role-model.

Born in Romford on 10th October 1966 Tony stated in his 1998 autobiography Addicted that he´d always enjoyed playing football and was never that good at anything else, all through his school-life he strived to excel at the sport and hoped to go one step further than his father had and actually play a first-team professional match, it helped that his local schools were reknowned for their young talent so it was a regular occurance that talent-scouts should visit his area. His first break came in 1977 at the age of 11 - he was playing for his school team at Eastbrook Comprehensive school in Dagenham and had even been elevated to playing for his borough (Barking and Dagenham) and the Essex county team as well, it was then that he realised he was on
e of the players that the scouts had their eye on.

However at the age of 13 he started to realise how cold and heartless football could be - he´d been called up for trials for the England Under 15 squad, he was there along with quite a few other future England professionals and something had never felt right before the trials, he was shunned big-time, given the shirt no.13 and told to stand behind the goal and keep quiet, and sure enough the day after the trials he was told he wasn´t going to be called up, apparently he and a few other london-based triallists had been seen fighting on the train and that wasn´t good enough, no matter how much Tony claimed his innocence it was no good, he was out - now for many people this would have made them re-think whether they were honestly going to be a footballer or not, but not Tony, it only made him more determined to get one over on the people who´d cheated him out of his place in the England squad.

Now this was all back in the days when there was an annual game between the England Schoolboys and the London squad - Tony was selected for London and saw this as his chance to show England what they were missing out on, he poured his heart out on the pitch that day and sure enough after an inquest into what had happened to him and his fellow london-triallists in the Schoolboys squad he was cleared to be chosen for the England Under 16s Squad.

As jubilant as he was that England had finally accepted him the shine was slightly taken off as it was always the Under 15 squad that got the big game - this one being against West Germany, he´d so wanted to play in that match, but being the professional that he is he decided to bide his time and wait for his moment to come. Of course by now the bigger scouts were starting to sniff around, Manchester United had invited him to take a look around Old Trafford, a few London clubs had expressed an interest, but none of the London clubs followed through their interest
and Tony never wanted to leave his home of Essex so Manchester United were out of the question, for now he was happy playing for his district on Saturdays, Dagenham United on Sundays and training with the England Under-16s.

But there was one man out to change all that - Steve Rowley, not the kind of name you´d expect in an opinion like this eh?, but he was the Arsenal Youth scout in the early 80s, and he´d noticed this fresh-faced young centre-back and had no hesitation in inviting this boy to Highbury to have a look around. This was the opportunity Tony had dreamed of - a well established first division club wanted him on their books, it was time to seize the moment. As you´ve all probably worked out Arsenal took him on and began to mould him into the player we see today. It didn´t take long before they gave him his debut in August of 1982 his first performance in a Red shirt was against Colchesters youth team playing for Arsenals youth team in a 3-1 defeat and then 3 months before his 16th birthday he was elevated to the Reserve team squad - the then Arsenal Reserve team manager Terry Burton (who went on to be Joe Kinnears assistant at Wimbledon and carried on to be temporary manager whilst they found a replacement) had called Tony´s father and informed him that Tony would be travelling to Salford to play against Manchester Uniteds reserve team. It was this match that he finally realised he´d made it - he´d been assigned to mark Frank Stapleton, a real big name, the match ended 1-1 but Tony didn´t care - he´d been playing against professionals, and that was all that had mattered.

This carried on till April 1983 when he was called into Terry Neill´s office, Arsenal were impressed with him, they wanted to offer him an Apprenticeship, he was offered a £104 a week pay-packet with a view to a professional contract, he´d have to pack his own kit, he´d be awake at 6am and not get home till gone 7.30pm, but that didn´t matter it was all going right and h
e had no idea that 6 months later he´d have been able to walk up to people in the street and honestly claim to be a professional footballer. However inbetween all of this he´d been picked to play for the England Under 17 team for a tournament taking place in Cannes and this is where he saw his first International goals scoring twice in a 4-4 draw against Yugoslavia and once against Greece in a 4-0 win.

The next season he was expected to be in the reserves and that was it - and on Bonfire Night Saturday fifth November he was all of a sudden thrown into the first team, David O Leary had picked up a knee injury and Arsenal were short on Centre Halves so at 17 years and 21 days old Tony Adams was the second youngest player to ever play for Arsenal (the youngest being Gerry Ward who was 16 years and 321 days when he played Huddersfield in 1953), playing in their 2-1 loss against Sunderland and now that he had his first appearance in the first team under his belt we had our England captain in the making.

Tony carried on his playing career, gradually and slowly gaining first-team experience under the then manager Don Howe but the world was to be turned upside down in 1986 - Don Howe, Tonys mentor for so long left the club to be replaced by the Millwall manager George Graham, all of a sudden Tony had a different style to play to, it was more authoritarian, he had to tow the line a bit more, and again he found his career in jeopardy, he had talent there was no doubt about it, but how was the new Boss going to react to him? But 1986`s new season was going to be the one that made him - Tony had decided to take this new opportunity by the horns and by the end of the season he was the third highest league goal-scorer with 6 goals, and the only ever-present in a League Cup winning side, this was the start of something big, Tony had found his perfect manager - someone who knew how to bring out all sorts of talents that people never knew he even had, all of a sud
den Tony has the confidence to run forward with the ball, hes not afraid to attack, and it isn´t only George Graham whose noticed this - Bobby Robson gives him his first ever England Cap against Spain at the Bernabeu Stadium in what turned out to be a 4-2 victory.

This was then topped off as at the start of the 1987-88 season, George Graham gave Tony the best praise any footballer could get from their club manager - he was made club captain, all this from someone who wasn´t even a first team regular till 2 years before, he was fast becoming the most wanted defender on the market, Manchester United were sniffing around again and on the outside everything was looking great, but in that season though he suffered his first big hit - losing the League Cup final to Luton Town 2-1, and his reaction?, it was to go out and become almost paralytic with drink, even to this day Tony has vague recollections of the time after the League Cup final, except that he ended up at Niall Quinns house watching Monty Python.

But us the viewing public never saw this - sure there was the odd tale or two about Tony Adams on a wild night out in London, but he always managed to keep it well hidden, and to this day it shocks people how he kept it hidden during Euro 88 - the whole full England Squad had done themselves proud during the tournament, and Tony was one of the shining stars in a campaign that peaked with 4 english (the last one from adams) goals in 25 minutes against Yugoslavia, but as with so many times before England were to crash out of the tournament, and once again that meant going on a bender for Tony Adams.

The next season 1988/89 was the big one for Arsenal fans and footbal fans alike from all over the globe to remember - Tony openly admits again that apart from training and matches he has very little recollection of the whole season, he just drank, trained, played and then drank again, all through the season Arsenal had led the first division - they
were tipped for the title, a shoe-in even, but the squads performances started to slip towards the end of the season, and Liverpool were fast catching up, in fact it all led to the last match of the season - Liverpool had over-taken Arsenal at the top of the table for the first time that season - they were 3 points clear and had a better goal difference too, in fact although they were top with one match to go - they could afford to lose it to Arsenal at Anfield by 1 goal´s difference - any more and they lost the title, the match had started at a high pace and it was a shock to see the score-line still at 0-0 at half-time, Tony recalls walking into the dressing room at half time nervous that they were all going to get a shouting at from George Graham, but instead it was still the same team-tactics attitude and a general chat about how to approach the second half.

Sure enough it paid off - early on in the second half a free kick had been floated into the area and Allan Smith had nodded it past Grobelaar to make it 1-0, but it was getting near the end of the match, there were celebrations in the stands already, but Arsenal and more specifically Michael Thomas had other ideas, in the dying seconds of the match in a well-worked move Thomas had chipped the ball over Grobelaar to make it 2-0, this all meant that at the age of 22 Adams was to be lifting the English Championship, and once again how did he celebrate?, by drinking himself stupid.

The next season proved hard to follow up, Adams and his side were a young team and the past season had taken its toll, top that up with Adams´ best friend Niall Quinn had been sold to Manchester City, the whole season ended up with Arsenal attaining an average 4th place in the League and no trophies, but that wasn´t going to be his worst worry, in the summer of 1990 he´d hit the headlines big-time, as his drinking finally caught up with him, visitting a friends barbecue he´d thought he was sober enough to drive - he
was nowhere near it, he´d made it 60 yards down the road before crashing into a brick wall, he´d been speeding so bad that the crash had been heard back at the barbecue, and sure enough there was the police involved and there was to be a court-case.

But first there was Arsenals pre-season tour of Singapore to worry about, as soon as he´d been released from questioning he´d darted to Heathrow Airport to join up with his team-mates, of course the press had gotten word of it all and were sat waiting for him, the same happened in Singapore where people were shouting `Adams, you crash car´ at him, but Tony just shrugged it off, all he wanted to do was play football.

Adams´ lawyer had told him that he´d probably get off with slapped wrists and a warning never to do it again, but the Judge had different ideas to that - he wanted to make an example of the young Adams, and he did so in sentencing him to prison for 9 months in total. All this should have been an eye-opener to Adams, he missed Christmas and New Years with his family and friends, he´d missed out on a seasons worth of football and it was all down to his drinking, but he was an alcoholic, it didn´t matter much to him, he spent nights listening to football matches in his cell, giggling as he heard of his team-mates playing in the freezing cold wind and rain whilst he was sat in a warm cell, he also kept his head down low, not wanting to cause any more trouble, he picked up a few of the prison ways and basically knuckled down whilst drawing cartoons and playing cards with his fellow inmates to pass the time.

Then on Feburary 15th 1991 he was released after 58 days due to good behaviour - during his time in prison Arsenal had still been paying him his wages and part of him saw that as a way of showing him he´d hardly done anything wrong, in fact he´d only got a fine of 2 weeks wages and that was it - nothing too big and once he was released he was back in the training regime again.
<
br><br><br>The next day George Graham threw him into a reserve team match to try and guage his fitness, but Tony had been fine and in the next week there was a fifth round tie in the FA Cup and Tony made his return to the first team away to Shrewsbury in a 1-0 win and then a month later he´d had his England recall and everything seemed fine, his career was just as he´d left it and in his eyes no real damage had been done, and just to affirm his feelings that everything was OK, he´d walked back into a team that was waltzing the English title, and Summer of 1991 Tony Adams an ex-con was a 2-time first division title winner.

The next season had seen the ban on English clubs in Europe lifted and that meant that Adams and Arsenal were to be playing in the European Cup, and in the 1991-92 season sure enough Adams was up against the finest Europe had to offer, of course though both Arsenal and Adams had been away from European competition for such a long time and it showed, after waltzing through against Austria Vienna Arsenal were up against Benfica, Adams felt confident about the tie but found that the Portugese sides star striker Isias ran rings round him, over 2 legs Arsenal had lost 3-1 to Benfica and were out of Europe by round 2 and once more Arsenal ended the season empty-handed (albeit joint holding the Charity Shield), and once again how did Tony deal with it?, he drank.

But the next season (1992-1993) was to be a big one for Adams, although the Championship was out of reach they hit the 2 Cups big time, in both matches beating Sheffield Wednesday 1-0, and in the League Cup final he picked up the monicker that would follow him around for the rest of his career - Donkey, for in the post-match celebrations he hoisted Steve Morrow above his shoulders, thing is he dropped him and on impact with the ground Morrow had fractured his arm.

Of course this meant that the next season (1993-1994) Arsenal were in Europe once again, they´d made
it into the Cup Winners Cup, Arsenal had a mission and so did Tony Adams, they had to bring back European Silverware, the whole of englands football fans were in need of a boost after the national team failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, and of course as we all know Arsenal delivered, one night, one match and for Tony, it was his biggest success and once again the celebrations were almost entirely consisting of drinking, there'd been no other team victories as such to celebrate on but he'd been voted player of the year by both the supporters and the 'Young Gunners', he'd been the teams best player that season and he knew it, but as with so many other successes he only ever saw it as a reason to drink even more.

However nothing could have prepared him for the bombshell that was going to hit in the 1994-1995 season, George Graham had been accused of accepting a bung from the agent Rune Hauge during the transfers of John Jensen and Pal Lydersen, the worst thing was Graham wasn't denying it, Arsenal were a club thrown in turmoil and as club captain Adams had to hold everyone in the squad together, there were wild claims flying around, people were saying that Graham was going to quit, there were talks of the squad breaking up and during all this Adams had to stand strong, Then out of the blue it was announced - the allegations were true, George Graham had indeed taken a bung and Arsenal Football Club terminated his contract immediately and all this in the midst of an attempt to retain the European Cup Winners Cup, Adams did stand strong though, he ensured that the team spirit was still there and via that they got to the final again, before former Tottenham star Nayim chipped David Seaman and left Arsenal runners-up in the competition.

All of this was done under Stewart Houston, the man temporarily put in charge of Arsenal till they could find a suitable successor to George Graham and as a warm-up for the 1995-1996 season Ho
uston had taken the whole squad on a pre-season tour of Hong Kong, but Adams was still on a downer due to the final of the Cup Winners Cup and the worst place to take an alcoholic on a downer is Hong Kong, Adams saw it as a chance to go on the bender to end all benders, and along with Ray Parlour he ended up drinking himself that bad that the only thing he remembers of the tour to this day is getting in a taxi cab and there being some kind of 'incident', Houston was later on known to have told Adams that in his eyes Adams drinking had cost Houston the Arsenal job.

The 1995-1996 season was one of change for Arsenal and Adams in particular, Bruce Rioch had been drafted in as the new coach and he'd spent big on players like Dennis Bergkamp and David Platt, and the North London faithful were left expecting glory, on top of this the whole of England was anxious for Euro 96 - which was going to be held in England and with Terry Venables leading our national side where could we go wrong?, in the league and cups that season Arsenal failed to impress, they were still coming to terms with a new manager with new ideas and they did enough to keep the team buzzing however the big time came as Euro 96 came closer, and the embarrassment of what famously became known as 'the dentists chair incident' was about to hit. Tony had been wise enough not to go out with the England squad in Chins on the night when photos had been taken of players stumbling around a bar having alcohol poured down the back of their throats, but he'd had to comprehend with the news stories about the flight home.

Certain members of the squad (who to this day are still unknown) had wrecked the plane they were on board, TVs were smashed, and the plane was a mess by the time the squad had finished with it, rather than have the actual culprits 'named and shamed' the whole squad released a statement accepting joint responsibility and apologising for any harm done, th
e problem was that there were a few comments behind closed doors saying that people thought that Tony was probably behind it all, the comments hurt but Tony didn't care - all he did was knuckle down with his football and concentrate on getting on with the task at hand - being Englands captain in Euro 96.

Now I'm sure right now that almost all of you don't need to know what happened during the tournament itself, we all remember the Germans beating us on penalties in the semi-finals right?, good so let it never be heard of again.

With the disappointment of being knocked out of Euro 96 behind him Tony found himself needing to do something to block out what had just happened and once again turned to alcohol, but this was to be the last time he ever went out on a bender. This time he realised he just couldn't take it any more - the drink was becoming too much of a factor in his life, his Dad had told him that people in the pubs were referring to him as a Drunk, he was forgetting whole days because of the effects of drink, it had to stop and he decided that with the character he had in the public eye, the best way to stop it, was to stop hiding it from the press, and Friday September the 13th 1996 he went to the press and said those 4 words 'I am an alcoholic' - it meant so much to him to get it out, to let the world know that he did have something wrong with him, and to take the first steps to recovery.

He'd turned to the Alcoholics Anonymous for help - knowing that they were the people who were going to help him get out of this rut, he weeped as he answered the questions in a leaflet that asked 'is the AA for you?' - questions such as 'have you ever had blackouts?' and 'have you ever missed work because of drink?', there were 12 questions in total in the leaflet and Tony answered all 12 Yes, it hurt him, it made him realise that there was a long struggle ahead of him if he was going to beat t
his illness, he saw football as his release from alcohol, instead of getting desperate to have a drink, he decided that he'd play football to take those thoughts away.

One of his biggest fears was the way Arsenal and the press in general were going to react to his admission, and in the early days his fears about the press were right, people feared that he was a bad role model for the younger generation, what if the kids saw that it was OK to drink because the England captain did it?, But slowly the press realised that he was actually being a good influence on the youth of the day, he was showing people that drinking was wrong, he was showing the world that he was ashamed of what he'd done and he had garnered respect because of it.

All the way through his battle against alcohol addiction he also had the backing of Arsenal as a club and as friends, the squad rallied round him, he was allowed to train as normal whilst visiting AA meetings and he never lost his place in the first team, this started to give him the confidence he needed to over-come everything and to start being a footballer again, he revelled in the confidence people had in him as well and focussed more on football than he had done for a long time. The 1996-1997 season was starting to look a bit better for Adams now that he had come to terms with the fight he had ahead of him, but there was another fight looming in the background at Arsenal, Bruce Rioch was stalling on a new contract and Arsenal were having none of it - it was the middle of the season and Rioch was sacked - once again Stweart Houston was in charge but only till the end of the season.

Again as we all know Arsene Wenger was to be brought in, this left Tony wondering where he would fit into the plans of this hardly heard of manager, there had been French players brought in before Wenger had even arrived and there was a worry about the 'continental' style of play that everybody expected from Wenger
and once again they had a fruitless season, however when Wenger finally arrived it was obvious that he was going to be bringing in a few new players but also that he was going to be keeping a lot of the old-style players and that included Adams.

1997-1998 came around with both the Arsenal faithful and the Arsenal players alike waiting to see what style of play Wenger was going to bring to the table, he'd bought flashy players like Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit, the old style midfield of Arsenal was no more, and the defence were going to have to put a bit more effort into their game, however Wenger had nurtured them, Adams especially and he wanted Adams to take control as club captain and as a senior player, he gave Adams the responsibility of keeping the team together, of making sure they stayed calm and collected and most importantly making sure that they stayed a team.

This all worked faster than anyone could ever imagine, the new look Arsenal had flair, passion, speed and agility, they showed the world what they were made of, everyone had expected Manchester United to dominate the English game, but it was Arsenal who were going to shock and with Adams as captain they won both the Premiership and the FA Cup in Arsene Wengers first ever season in charge, the celebrations however brought back a painful memory of when Adams was drinking as one of the youngsters in the squad sprayed champagne all over the dressing room, some of it hit Adams in the face and passed through his lips, at the time he made sure that the youngster knew that this had upset him, but shortly afterwards he approached the youngster and apologised, this being the attitude of Adams in todays world, he cared more about the youngsters feelings than he did his own.

The summer of 1998 brought around the World Cup in France, there'd been a lot of stories in the press about Glenn Hoddle the then England coach hiring a faith healer to help him and his squad, Adams had
heard these rumours, in fact he'd been offered the faith healers services but he didn't care, he just got on with his football and captained the England side as best he could, once again I'm sure we can all remember what happened and we won't go there again thankyou very much.

I'm rambling now, I am aren't I?, well I'm going to end the talk of whats happened in Adams' career right here, its the last paragraph about it - promise.

Since World Cup 98 we've seen a Tony Adams that has still played to his very best in every game, but hes started to become slightly more injury prone, his back and knees are now getting weaker and weaker, he still has the talents he always ever had and in fact is still the club captain of Arsenal, but because of these injury worries he's retired from the international game in January of this year.

However no matter what, his dominance in the penalty area, the passion he so obviously has for the game, and his whole 'never-say-die' attitude are what make him the man I looked up to when growing up and even now all these years later, hes still the same player, the new faster centre-forwards always come along expecting to beat him, but hes still masterful enough in tackling, defending and generally knowing his where-abouts on the field that he's almost always got the better of them, and thats what makes him a living legend.

(Please note the questions at the bottom are un-answered because they're more suited to team reviews)

Summary: