Michael Owen: Off the Record - Michael Owen

Скачать книгу

from childhood.

      Through those early experiences on the course I learned a few lessons about the etiquette of golf – where to walk, where to put your bag and so on. It was a good grounding, because golf is a gentleman’s sport with lots of etiquette. I soon progressed to wanting to hit balls myself. ‘Go on, Dad,’ I would say, ‘just give me one go.’ Eventually, on warm Sunday evenings, he would let me play a few holes, all the while still looking for lost balls. Dad then got me a membership at Hawarden Golf Club, the local course, and my friends began to join too.

      There were so many new juniors that the club began to send us away on courses. During the school holidays we were there morning, noon and night, playing 36, sometimes 54 holes. It’s an incredible thought. These days, I can’t walk 18 holes without feeling knackered. By the age of 13 my handicap was down to nine, and I began taking lessons from David Vaughan, a professional based at Llangollen. At one stage Dad became a bit concerned about the number of hours I was spending with a club in my hand. He was worried that I was starting to prefer golf to football. In the summer it was golf, golf, golf. He didn’t stop me playing, but he did remind me a couple of times, ‘Football’s your game, don’t get too distracted.’

      The snooker club was another of our regular haunts. We’d pay £2 for an hour of light above the table. We would always have black-ball games because Dad would let me get close to winning so there would be a decent climax. Every game was tense. The people who owned the hall must have been sick of us because every time I would run down the stairs with 50p to ask for 15 more minutes’ worth of light just so we could squeeze in the end of the frame. I’m sure Dad paid for an hour just to add to the drama; he knew how excited I’d be getting when the sixtieth minute was approaching. When the lights went out, you were in pitch darkness, so I was constantly badgering him for that extra 50p.

      I’m not sure whether he went through these routines to encourage me to be competitive or whether it simply amused him to see me getting so worked up. But certainly, if I didn’t find as many golf balls as my dad I would be fuming. I’d still remember it as a great day, but there would be something missing. To get first pick of the washed balls was, to me, a major prize. I’d like to think he shaped me as a man, but not by waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘Right, how can I form Michael’s character today?’ It was much more natural than that. All the activities he wanted to do I fell in love with too. And every time I played I wanted to win. It’s the fierce nature I’ve always had.

      I’ll give any game a go. I played for Hawarden Cricket Club and made it into the senior side at 13. I love darts and bowls, too. Once a month we’d go to the tenpin bowling alley in Chester. Boy, was that competitive. My dad used to be brilliant, with a smooth action that helped him hit the middle pin every time. Now his action has gone, and we always take the mickey out of him for it.

      I’m proud to be able to summarize my childhood as fun and character building, with family life to the fore. My parents gave us everything they could. I can recall plenty of examples. In my early teens, Dad wanted to take me to visit a few clubs to open my eyes to how football worked. One day we were invited to Sheffield Wednesday to have a look round, and as we were about to leave the youth-team manager stopped us and said, ‘Right, here’s your expenses.’ Twenty quid, I think it was. So off we raced, straight past home and on to Rhyl pleasure beach to spend the money on rides before returning to the house. I’ll never forget that day.

      When I look back on my childhood, that incident sums up my parents. Any spare penny they had was spent on the kids to make them as happy as could be. They never spent a thing on themselves. Sometimes I wonder whether Mum wore the same clothes for 20 years.

      Whatever your mum and dad say or do, for most people that’s the gospel. I would never want to spoil my kids because giving in to every wish or demand was something my parents never did. But any time I get a spare minute I want to spend it with my children, to make them as happy as we were. Now, of course, I’m scoring goals for England and having a great life, yet being a kid is really hard to beat, if you’re lucky enough to have grown up in the kind of parental environment I experienced. It’s wonderful to have such a comfortable existence now, and to live in such a nice house, but if somebody said to me ‘You’ve got to give it all back and live the life you had as a child’, I could think of worse things. I would have no problem with my daughter Gemma or son James growing up that way. If money is tight in a family things are given to kids only for the right reasons; no child is going to get anything just because they cry for it. It’s easy to brush problems off with money (‘here’s a couple of quid, go and buy some sweets’), but the best things in life are free, as everyone knows. For my dad to take me, on the back of his bike, to feed some horses in a field for half an hour was my idea of a treat; Dad spending £40 on one activity, or paying for an expensive holiday, just didn’t have the same appeal. Give me a simple train ride any day.

      I won’t deny that my wealth from football has enabled me to help the whole family financially. When I was 18 and building a house a mile from the family home, a new estate with some really nice houses was being constructed nearby. It was always my intention to buy homes for members of my family, and it was just coincidental that a chance to do so arose so close to where I was building on the plot of land I had found. Mum and Dad liked the show house we went to inspect. Initially I bought two show homes because my brother Andy has always liked his own space; the idea was that the family would live in one while Andy took the house next door. At first I didn’t think any further ahead than that, but soon I started to feel it was unfair on my other brothers and sisters. So I bought the next two houses along, for my older sister Karen and my brother Terry. Lesley was very young, so I didn’t need to buy one for her, but subsequently the next one in the close became available and I acquired that one as well. The next house along also came on the market, but we didn’t have enough family members to fill it. So there is one non-Owen in the street. He’s a very nice fella and doesn’t seem to mind sharing the close with my whole family. The arrangement probably won’t last for ever. If Lesley’s boyfriend or Karen’s boyfriend moves away through work it’s possible that one or both of them will move on. But at least it has given them a start on the property ladder. If they wanted to move, obviously I wouldn’t take offence.

      I’ve always liked investing in property. In 2003 I bought a couple of plots of land in the Algarve, near where Paul Ince has a place. Having poured all my energy into my new home in North Wales, initially I didn’t make much headway in terms of building on the land in Portugal, but it’s an exciting project for the future. The house will be open to all the family, and I like the idea of us going there in the summer with all the kids for a major holiday. I’m also buying a place on The Palm in Dubai. When we visited the city before the 2002 World Cup, members of the England team were offered the chance to buy in the resort. Half a dozen of us said yes.

      But I don’t see myself as special in any way. One of my brothers drilling the wrong hole on an aeroplane wing is a much more serious issue than me having a bad time in a football match. When I pick up an injury I don’t expect a stream of sympathy from them. Missing a goal is part of the job; being a hero or a villain is part of the job. We’re all good at something. It just happens that I’m good at football and that has a high public profile, so everyone notices what I do. I’m skilled at football, my brothers are skilled at engineering. Neither talent is more valuable or important than the other. In the Owen family we just get on with life and look out for one another.

       2 Little Big Man

      From my earliest days as a footballer I was up there with the big boys – we’re talking size and age here, not fame. Almost from my first serious kick I left my own generation behind to take on older lads – perhaps starting a trend that ended with my World Cup goal against Argentina when I was only 18.

      My first memories of my life in football date from when I was seven. I started properly with Mold Alexander, five miles from the family home, though people often trace my beginnings to Hawarden Pathfinders, who were my local cub side. They played every few months, so fixture congestion was hardly a problem. When Dad took me to Mold he was told that the youngest age

Скачать книгу