Paul Ferris: The football prodigy whose shattered dreams sparked redemption

‘There was an enormous contradiction in my life. I really didn’t want to go, if I am being honest. I had a girlfriend (Geraldine) and people would laugh and say: ‘She is just your childhood sweetheart.’ But she is now my wife. My mum had been ill and I had a terrible fear that if I left I wouldn’t see her again.

'Moving from Ireland in 1981 is not the same as it is now. It felt a long way from home. In the early days I don’t think desperate is too strong a word. You live in digs with a very decent family but they are not your family. You are walking around in a city you have no connection to. I played in the first team in May and my friends from school took their O Levels in June.

'The manager had me training with the first team quite quickly. But I would hang about the training ground as long as I could because I knew I would just spend my evenings listening to music and binge-eating Curly Wurlys.’

When you made your debut in 1982, aged 16 and 294 days, you became the youngest player in Newcastle’s history. Did you feel this was the start of a glorious career?

‘I can still remember that day, walking into a proper stadium and feeling part of the team. To step off the coach and realise: this is what your life could become. I walked into the changing room and in those days we still used telegrams but they were all for me because it was my special day. In the warm-up I could hear my name being sung by Newcastle fans. I can remember the feeling in my chest. You get this enormous rush. There were moments when I felt really confident as though nothing could stop me and others when I felt empty.’

You were training and playing with Chris Waddle, Paul Gascoigne and your idol Kevin Keegan, who said you were the most talented young player he had seen. Fans started asking you for autographs. Did you feel that a career in football was now your destiny?

‘When I first arrived at Newcastle, Chris Waddle and Paul Gascoigne were very talented people but the real inkling something huge was happening was when Kevin Keegan walked through the door (in 1982) when I had just turned 17. Keegan was the first icon that entered my psyche because I was a Liverpool fan. He was a huge figure who seemed in a different world to me, but then I was sitting in the same changing room as him.

'At that age I struggled to cope mentally and I was a bit daunted by it all. Someone could say good things about me, like Kevin did, but they would have to tell me ten times before it sunk into my head. People might laugh but even as I might have looked like I had the perfect life as a footballer, I was envious of friends going to university. I would have loved that life. If you have a lot going on in your head sometimes football doesn’t satisfy that.’

You made 13 appearances and scored your first goal in a 3-1 win over Bradford in the League Cup, but then a knee ligament injury ripped your life apart. How did it affect you?

‘Although I had experienced hamstring injuries before, my big knee injury came when I was 19 or 20 and I didn’t leave the club until I was 21 so I had a year and a half when I knew I wasn’t right. I knew the moment I did it that it was much worse than people thought. I could feel myself slipping away. In football you are on your way up or on your way down.

'When I got injured I got a year’s contract which was a decent thing for the club to do. At the end of the year they couldn’t release my from my contract because I was still injured but they couldn’t offer me a new one so they put me on a month-to month-contract. But the biggest problem was when my contract wasn’t renewed. I didn’t have the courage to go back to the club for help. I called them but nobody answered and I wasn’t the sort of person to knock the door down.

'Then I faced the thing I feared worst: my mother’s death. She died maybe three weeks after I had surgery. I wasn’t at the club and I had no job and no home. I was walking outside and it was daylight but I thought it was dark. I had never felt so low. Geraldine (who had since moved to Newcastle) was the only reason I got through that period.’

You had to go to the Welfare Office to ask for money and sign onto the housing list. But it was located next door to St James’ Park – Newcastle’s home stadium. Did that visit symbolise your decline?

‘Because I didn’t have anywhere to go I stayed with a friend and his mum and she suggested I go to the dole office. But because I wasn’t fit to work, as a result of my injury, I had to go to a different office which ironically happened to be right behind St James’ Park. It was pretty brutal. When I walked past the ground I dipped my head as I went past the gates because I was embarrassed. I saw one of the players, Glenn Roeder, driving through the gates in a nice car. A few moments later I was standing in this little room. There was not much privacy, just a glass screen. There was a man lying on a bench behind me. He was drunk and he had spilt alcohol on his pants or he had wet himself. I was trying to whisper but you have to bury your pride and say: “I need help.”’

A few weeks earlier you were a professional footballer and had fans asking you for autographs. Were you shocked at the speed of your decline in fortunes?

‘I left home to be a footballer so to friends and family and everyone I was: Paul Ferris, the footballer who plays for Newcastle United. But then I was standing in the dole office and someone was saying: “Don’t you play for Newcastle?” And you think: “No, not any more. That’s why I am standing here.”

'I applied for a job in a sports shop but I got turned down because I didn’t have enough O Levels. Having played for Newcastle United didn’t matter. I spent 6-7 months floating around. I was just relying on my wife. We had to get a council flat. Then I heard an advert for Newcastle College which said: “Come and enrol and be who you want to be.” So I began to study physiotherapy. I didn’t do it to get back into football. I did it because it was the only academic thing I could do. I started working at Freeman Hospital as a physio. I was trying to find a new identity.’

While studying in your early 20s you also played for lower-league clubs like Barrow AFC, Whitley Bay and Gateshead, but you had to retire aged 25. Did you already know your football ambitions were over?

‘By the time I came back when I was 22 or 23 I felt like my energy was in my academic work. I was playing football to pick up some money for food. But when I look back at my performances compared to when I was 16 I was an entirely different player. I had lost my pace and I wasn’t twisting and turning like I was before.’

In 1993 you were invited back to Newcastle to works as a physio and you stayed there until 2006, working under managers like Kevin Keegan and Bobby Robson. Did it feel like a new way to forge a life within football?

‘When I got the chance to be a physio at Newcastle the players valued what I had done and I got respect from them. Those early years with Kevin Keegan were the most exciting in the modern period of that club and you did feel part of it.

‘When Alan Shearer got an injury he put his faith in what I could do and that was hugely rewarding to watch someone strive to get back. To feel I had played a small part in that gave me great satisfaction. You get a sense of achievement, not because your name would be sung from the rafters, but because people valued you again.

'But my friendship with Alan cost me in the end when Ruud Gullit came in and I was seen as too close to Alan. That soured my experience and I realised I could be tossed in the wind by different managers when they come in.

‘Somebody asked me if I regretted that it didn’t work out as a footballer because I could have earned more money. But if I hadn’t been a footballer I might not have got the physio job at Newcastle. I left home to be a footballer but as a player and physio I still had an 18-year association with the club and when I drive past the stadium with my kids we know we live around there because of the relationship I had with the club. It didn’t make up for not being a player but it helped me to go forwards.’

You also studied a Masters in the History of Ideas and then began to study for a law degree, eventually being called to the bar at Middle Temple in 2007. Did education help you to rebuild your life after football?

‘Getting those qualifications was the only way I could say I have ability. I wish I wasn’t that way. I couldn’t have done the law stuff before the physio stuff because I didn’t feel I was capable. Then I did my Masters and I knew I could do law. I got my confidence from that. Education was a new way of getting some validation that I was still capable after football.’

You began working as a criminal barrister but when Alan Shearer became manager of Newcastle in 2009 he asked you to come back. Why didn’t you remain in law?

‘There was no doubt in my mind that once I had started that journey I was going to carry on with law. It was a tough and arduous journey and I would have practised law quite happily if I hadn’t got that call. I think financially, and for what I put my family through, I should have stayed put! Alan himself would have thought he would be a manager for a long time (he was at Newcastle for just eight games) and I thought he would be England manager one day. It was an intoxicating thing for someone like me. I wasn’t interested in the limelight but I would love the idea of quietly being effective somewhere. On reflection that was a mistake.’

You have since found success as CEO of the health and fitness company Speedflex and you have written two books – a romantic thriller called An Irish Heartbeat and a candid autobiography of your life in football called The Boy On The Shed. Do you feel your life has been a success, albeit not in the way you had planned?

‘It has been good to get involved in the creative building of a company and writing books. I am glad I am where I am. I have had health problems with a heart attack and cancer and being a self-employed lawyer my outlook might have been bleak because I wouldn’t be able to convalesce like I could when doing what I now do. It is an unusual journey I have been on. It’s not a normal football story. If anybody says: “I didn’t expect that life from a footballer,” that is an achievement for me.’

Do you think young players who retire early are still going through what you experienced?

‘I sincerely hope not. I think it has got better. But football is still a working-class sport and the players are now spotted so young. Their parents, who might not have a great salary themselves, might look at this as a guarantee that it will change their lives but one injury can change that in a heartbeat. There are still boys getting spewed out of football at 21 to 24 and they must feel as lost as I did. I hope that somebody is there giving them pastoral care and looking after them better than in the 1980’s because they need it.’

The Boy On The Shed by Paul Ferris (Hodder & Stoughton) is out now, priced £20