In much the say way as when a character in a soap opera will
say something like "the worst is behind us," or "things are
going to be great from now on" and you know that the scriptwriters have
some disaster planned for them, then there are times when I read a news story, note the optimism and expectation and think to myself, this will end badly.
So it was when the story appeared on the BBC website that
former England international Paul Gascoigne had signed for Sunday League team
Abbey in Bournemouth. Abbey manager and taxi driver Chris Foster was apparently
driving Gascoigne, stopped to buy cigarettes and got the ex Spurs and Lazio
midfielder to complete a signing on form. [1]
I might be cynical, I might be uncharitable, but I don't think that I'm wrong
in believing that it is unlikely in the
extreme that Gazza will ever take to the field in a Bournemouth park to play
for Abbey, especially after another news story that appeared about him almost
simultaneously. Doubtless you will have seen the story of his being admitted to
hospital after being found in the street near his home in Poole, wandering in
an apparently drunken state while clutching a spirits bottle.
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| Gascoigne's goal against Scotland in 1996. Picture: Daily Mirror |
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| Gascoigne last week. Picture: Daily Mail. |
That expression about the fine line between genius and
madness may be somewhat overused, but in the case of Gascoigne it has some
truth. On a football pitch, with the ball at his feet, he could be a genius.
His sublime goal against Scotland in Euro '96 at Wembley was just one stand out
moment in a career that ought to have made him one of the game's all time
greats, but then there were incidents like the ill advised tackle on Gary
Charles of Nottingham Forest in the 1991 when Gascoigne was playing for Spurs.
That tackle ruptured Gascoigne's cruciate ligament, causing him to miss a whole
season. On and off the pitch Gascoigne has been haunted by demons; on it with
ill timed tackles like the one on Charles and the miming of flute playing (a la Orange Order marchers) when playing
for Rangers against Celtic; off it with his well documented descents into
alcoholism, drug abuse and mental illness and his frequent visits to the Priory
for rehab.
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| Gascoigne's challenge on Charles was bad for both men. Picture: The Guardian. |
Professional sport, especially professional football, is a
field where at the very top level the athletes are cosseted, indulged and
generally divorced from the real world that to a very great extent it is
understandable that at the end of their careers they may find that real world
quite difficult to deal with. Even more so than the office worker or factory
worker who retires in their sixties and finds a world without work difficult to
come to terms with, professional sportsmen (and it does only seem to be the
men) have much more of a culture shock to deal with and at a very much younger
age. It is not uncommon for them to go off the rails; Gascoigne however was off
the rails during his career and it was only the structure and routine that the
game gave him that prevented him from oblivion at a young age.
At the same time that Gascoigne was reportedly signing for a
Bournemouth Sunday side, and at the same time as he was being taken to
hospital, QPR manager Harry Redknapp was offering him a small coaching role at
the club. The fact that people like Redknapp, and others before him have tried,
and will continue to try helping the very troubled Geordie comes down to the
fact that despite all of his problems people like him and genuinely want to
help him. He still betrays that childlike innocence that endeared football fans
to him when he began his career with Newcastle United in 1984; talented, daft
as a brush and apparently down to earth, it seems that people can't help but
like him, regardless of what he does.
This is beginning to read a bit like an obituary and sadly I
don't think it will be many years before a real one will have to be written for
Paul Gascoigne. Stan Seymour, his onetime chairman at Newcastle described him
as "George Best without the brains" and we all know what fate befell
Best. The fact is that we look at people like Paul Gascoigne, with their
enviable lifestyle, their exuberant apparently happy go lucky personas and
wonder how they can ever get themselves in such a mess. The sad death of Robin
Williams just recently sparked many tributes on social media along with some
people wondering how someone like him could come to take their own life,
"What," some people asked, "could he have had to be depressed
about?" Exactly the same things as anyone else. Fame and fortune are no
barriers to depression; celebrity and riches are no impediment to addiction. In
the UK over 15,000 people die every year due to alcohol related factors; the
World Health Organisation estimate that 121 million people suffer from
depression worldwide. Age, gender, race, religion, wealth, occupation; none are
barriers to alcoholism, drug addiction or depression so we should never be
surprised that those who appear to have it all are as vulnerable to these
problems as anyone else.
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| Robin Williams...many people wondered what he could have been depressed about. |
Why, one might ask did Gascoigne sign for a Sunday team when
he was quite obviously not in any fit state to contemplate playing football
again, even at that level? It has always struck me that he, like so many people
is unable to say No. Some people are unable to say No to another drink, unable
to say No to placing another bet, unable to say No to dubious business deals,
unable to say No to people in general. Obviously I don't know Paul Gascoigne,
nor am I a psychiatrist, but what I see in him is a vulnerable person who wants
to be liked, a relatively naive person who has been exploited and whose
addictive personality has been driven by his vulnerability and desire to be
liked. It may be a truism that his addictive personality prevents him from
saying No, not just to other people but to himself but that difficulty in being
able to say No is also a symptom of fear of conflict. Saying No can be hard; it
can lead to confrontation, to argument. Far easier to say Yes and deal with the
consequences later (or not, as I suspect is Gazza's way). There's a bit of me
speaking there; I know that I have trouble saying No sometimes. Maybe because I
don't want to upset someone; maybe because I want to appear helpful; maybe
because I am afraid of appearing rude. Sometimes saying No now is less painful,
even if it merely delays the inevitable.
Someone once said," You learn, right, a lot of people's
problems - why they get upset, why they get down, why they turn to drink - is
because they can't say one word and it's N-O, no." And the man who said
it? Ironically, it was Paul Gascoigne himself.
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