“HAD I LET IN RONALDINHO’S FREE-KICK, PEOPLE WOULD HAVE SAID, ‘SEAMAN WOULD HAVE SAVED THAT EASILY’”
The former gloveman on being scouted by a tea lady and why he loves dunking his Cornish pasties in a glass of milk…
Interview Ben Mountain
NIGEL MARTYN
A tea lady got you signed by Gerry Francis at Bristol Rovers. True or false?
A man called Gordon Rowland owned the carpet shop in St Blazey, where I was playing non-league football, and he knew Vi Harris, the tea lady at Bristol Rovers. He rang her and said, “We have a decent young goalie down here who perhaps you should be looking at.” Vi spoke to Gerry and he replied, “Get him up and we’ll have a look, then.” My family had driven from Cornwall to watch the trial but nobody said anything to us in the clubhouse afterwards, so we were heading off en masse when Gerry came darting out, saying, “Where are you going?!” He asked what I was earning and I told him that I was on 95 quid a week at a plastics factory. He said, “Right, we’ll give you £105.” So, for £10 a week more, I chose to have a change of career.
With all of that in mind, how did it feel to become the first £1 million goalkeeper at Crystal Palace in 1989?
Very strange. I don’t think I’d have packed in football, but I came close at Bristol. My wife and I could barely afford a flat, so I said to Rovers, “Look, if we can’t get ourselves sorted with our own place, I’m considering quitting.” The club handed me a new deal which gave me enough to just about get on the property ladder. We were in the new gaff for 13 weeks before they sold me! Coming from Cornwall, Bristol was a huge step, so moving to London was another. It may have been only Croydon, but even that seemed big.
Although Palace finished third in 1990-91, you were denied a European place at the last minute. How much did that impact the side falling apart in subsequent years, and why did you stay when others left?
It undoubtedly had an effect. Ian Wright was always going to be the one to move on, and in losing a striker of that ability, there wasn’t anyone else we could bring in. With European qualification, maybe Steve Coppell could have convinced him to stay. More people jumped ship when we were relegated in 1994-95 and by then I was in my late twenties. I felt that if I didn’t get something soon, perhaps no one would come in for me.
After you joined Leeds, in 1996, manager Howard Wilkinson was replaced by Geo
