Addicted to Football

Jon Newby

Description

Addicted to Football: A Journey from Anfield to Almost Everywhere is the autobiography of former professional footballer Jon Newby. His career took him from a single Premier League appearance with Liverpool to playing for clubs all over the country in the top eight tiers of the football pyramid. There was also a spell in Scottish football and a venture into non-league management. As a young player, Jon achieved his dream as he walked out in front of a packed Kop at Anfield. But ultimately his name was better known by Bury, Morecambe and Colwyn Bay fans, rather than by Liverpool fans. His story gives a fascinating insight into the unpredictable world of the journeyman footballer, covering battles with injuries, managers and even his own mind. Jon's biggest battle, however, came when he was diagnosed with an incurable heart condition and the game he was addicted to put his life in serious danger.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801502399
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Jon Newby, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801500739
eBook ISBN 9781801502399
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Contents
Foreword by Hugh McAuley
Introduction
Prologue
1. I want to play for Liverpool
2. It was like starting a new school
3. I wasn t emotional about leaving Liverpool
4. Different fuckin class
5. The club have accepted a bid for you
6. If we don t get promoted, I will have to leave
7. I don t have many regrets from my career but
8. What s the old saying? Never go back
9. I don t think I ll ever get fit
10. Where do I go from here?
11. Going through the motions
12. I was back in the Football League
13. If I scored every chance, I d still be at Liverpool
14. Even winning the league I never felt part of it
15. It was a club I wasn t sad to leave
16. Favourites to go down
17. Do you want the job?
18. It s time for a change
19. Keep playing for as long as you can
20. Royton away, two o clock kick-off
21. Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy
22. One last game
23. Coming full circle
24. Acknowledgements
Photos
TO MY FAMILY
For my mum and dad, who gave me the love and opportunity to succeed with everything that they did for me. You were and still are always there for me.
For my brother David, who for years travelled all over the country to watch me. Your support always meant more than you will ever know and kept me going on the bad days.
For my amazing wife Wendy, who had to put up with all my moods after the bad games. You were the one who always believed in me and never stopped supporting me, both on and most importantly off the pitch. That meant everything to me.
For my children Josh and Olivia, my best friends, who make me proud every day. Watching you both score goals now makes me happier than if I d scored again myself.
I love you all.
Foreword by Hugh McAuley
JON WAS nine years old when I first spotted him playing for Formby Junior Sports Club alongside my son Barry.
Jon s dad Jim and I would be at the boys game early on a Sunday afternoon to help set up the goals, along with the other parents whose lads played in the local Craven Minor Junior Football League.
At that young age Jon would always show the confidence in his natural ability and self-belief to run past opposing players with and without the ball. Throughout that first season he would use his exceptional speed to score many individual goals; he was always desperate to score, and thrived on any passes or crosses that came his way in and around the penalty area.
As a natural footballer these were the traits that always stood out in his game, scoring regularly and taking the eye against any team Formby played. It was an excellent little side with a lot of the youngsters ending up playing at a really good level.
Little did Jon know that those early development days would eventually lead to him playing on the hallowed turf of Anfield for Liverpool Football Club at first-team level.
It was at this time that Dave Shannon and I were asked by Liverpool to help set up a new centre of excellence and, soon after, the club appointed Steve Heighway as the new youth development officer. These were exciting times and Jon was one of a fantastic group of young, aspiring footballers invited to the newly formed youth system, which also included Robbie Fowler, Dominic Matteo, Phil Charnock, David Thompson, Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen.
At that time Kenny Dalglish was the first-team manager and he was keen for us to develop local players. He would often come along to the sessions at the Vernon Sangster sports centre opposite Anfield to support his son Paul and would inevitably end up playing in the five-a-side game with the boys, which always finished the session off.
Following his expected development, Jon progressed to fulltime training and made his mark at youth-team level when we won the FA Youth Cup for the first time in the club s history in 1996.
Jon made his first-team debut in the League Cup against Hull City in 1999 and we were all extremely pleased for him. He left two years later to join Bury to further his career and play regular first-team football.
It was always a pleasure to work with Newbs in those formative years and to this day we are still very good friends and speak regularly. He now uses all his experience working full time in the recruitment department at Liverpool s academy, identifying talented young players hoping to follow the same path and live their dream of wearing the red shirt of Liverpool Football Club at Anfield.
Jon was a model professional. He was a credit to himself, his family and his profession.
Hughie McAuley
Introduction
IT WAS a freezing February afternoon in Darwen near Blackburn. The rain, which had been coming down almost sideways, had turned into hailstones that were literally bouncing off the astroturf pitch.
I could hardly see my team-mates, let alone the ball, as the weather got worse. My hands were absolutely freezing and apart from the managers and subs of both teams there was nobody watching; nobody at all, not even one man and his dog.
Why? Well not many people ever watched the Manchester Amateur League Bridgewater Cup semi-final at the best of times, let alone in this weather - or so I m led to believe. It was the first time I had played in this competition.
Yet a minute later I controlled a pass with my right foot and smashed it past the Springhead goalkeeper with my left from just inside the box to bring us level at 1-1 and I forgot about the cold, I forgot about how sore my Achilles was feeling on the hard surface of the pitch and instead felt one of the best feelings in the world, scoring a goal.
In that split second I could have been back at Anfield playing for Liverpool. It didn t matter that I was only playing for the Walshaw Sports A team, or the Walshaw Legends as we preferred to be called. It was a goal and I would never get tired of scoring goals no matter who I was playing for.
This is the story about my life as a lower-league footballer who simply couldn t give the game up. Most of the time I have loved football, on occasions I have hated it, but for years it has taken over my life.
It is a story that gives an insight in to what it is like trying to make a living in the unpredictable world of lower-league football. It starts as a young boy dreaming of playing for Liverpool and takes twists and turns through eight tiers of English football.
On the way there is elation, despair, and serious injury along with a spell in management, battles with my own mind and, as my career ended, a condition so serious that heart surgery was the only option.
Prologue
YOU SEE defibrillators used in television dramas. This wasn t television. This was real life. My life.
The surgeon counted down from five to zero. I had no idea what was coming.
Boom!
The shock hit me like nothing I had ever experienced in my life as the electrical current went through me and I felt my body jump off the operating table.
Most people have defibrillators used on them when they are unconscious, but I was wide awake. The power and force of the shock was unbelievable.
A few years earlier, on 8 March 2014, I hadn t long been playing for Walshaw when I collapsed on the pitch following a 30-yard sprint against Elton. An ambulance was called and I spent the rest of the day in hospital wired up to all kinds of machines but was discharged later that night after nothing untoward was found in any of my tests.
Over the next few years, I would regularly have dizzy spells when playing. The managers at Walshaw even began to fill their pockets with glucose energy sweets at games and would throw them on to the pitch to me hoping it would help if I didn t feel right, but no doctors could get to the bottom of the situation.
I was often rushing to games as I was at work on a Saturday morning and probably wasn t eating as well as I should have been ahead of a match. The doctors even felt it could be something as simple as low blood sugar levels or dehydration.
As things got worse and I suffered two more collapses over the next few months, once while coaching and another while playing, I saw a doctor called Nick Jenkins who was painstaking in his quest to find out what was wrong. He saw enough to send me to London to St George s Hospital in London to see Professor Sanjay Sharma, who specialised in athletes with cardiac conditions. I went through various ECG and exercise tests on treadmills and bikes before I went into his office to speak to him.
I already knew that something wasn t right. You don t keep collapsing for no reason, but I wasn t expecting the news to be quite so bad.
He showed me my ECG readings from my exercise tests. There were no regular up-and-down lines of a heartbeat on one of the pages. Instead, it was like a kid had scribbled all over the page.
This is a major concern. I don t like the look of it at all, Professor Sharma told me. He said that although my heart was strong, the electrical part of it simply didn t