I felt so stupid. And humiliated. I didn’t have to ask how bad it might look. I was there in the room and I knew. Now the whole country was about to find out as well. It was a nightmare. I tried to prepare myself for the shame of putting myself and my family in such an awful position.
When the paper dropped next morning it was actually worse than I had expected. Not only had they described everything in detail (with pictures as well) but they had also taken a moral stance claiming that we had been ‘disrespecting and degrading women’. That was absolute rubbish. No one had done anything they didn’t want to. I hadn’t done anything illegal. I was a single young lad who was the victim of someone else’s greed for money and the public’s appetite for salacious scandal.
It was all very predictable. Any story about footballers and their behaviour had to contain a negative and sinister slant. It was too much to expect even-handed treatment, though I found their tone a bit rich for a newspaper with their weekly content. Unfortunately, I was in no position to throw stones.
The rest of the press jumped on the bandwagon and for a week everyone had their say about me, about footballers, and about the disintegration of polite society. It all seemed wildly over the top to me but I had no voice to defend myself because I was there on tape and therefore open to accusation.
It was all very tacky and I have never felt so humiliated in all my life. I felt sick from the embarrassment, and experienced gut-wrenching, stomach-churning nausea for days. Dad was right. How could I have been so stupid? I didn’t want to be tagged as an irresponsible young reprobate. It wasn’t me. I wanted to be a decent person and for people to regard me as a young player with a good reputation and a bright future.
I wasn’t brought up to be the person who had been vilified in newsprint. I’d made an error of judgement in a situation where I should have been more aware of the possible consequences. I was disappointed with myself and have never felt so low.
Facing Mum was the worst. The whole thing was the most mortifying combination of events I think any son could present to his mother. She wasn’t angry, just very hurt.
‘You’ve let us down, Frank, but more than anything you’ve let yourself down,’ she said. ‘This isn’t you. It’s not the way you behave and it’s things like this that send the career of a young footballer into the gutter and down the drain.’
I was motionless. There were tears running down my face and even though there were a million things racing around my head I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I knew she was right. She felt the brunt of the shame. I’d let her down badly – her and my sisters, my nan and grandad.
I knew from football that some of the best lessons are those you glean from mistakes and now I had to do the same in my life. I should never have put myself in such a compromising situation and in retrospect I should never even have been in Ayia Napa. Needless to say I haven’t returned.
It was my first real taste of the damage the papers can do and how ruthless they can be. I’m pleased now that I can talk about it as being such a long time ago without the possibility of anything similar being thrown at me. My bad experience with the press didn’t end there, however. Worse, it raised its ugly head again around one of the most infamous days in modern history, 11 September 2001.
Reports of the terrorist atrocities that were taking place in New York began to filter through just as we were preparing to start training that morning. There was no way of realizing what was actually happening at that moment and when we returned to the dressing room afterwards there was a tension about what we might discover.
Some of the staff were very upset and when I found out the extent of what had happened I left Harlington immediately and spent the rest of the day in a horrified trance watching the news channels and trying to comprehend what was going on. I got a call from the club telling me that our UEFA Cup game which was scheduled for later in the week was likely to be called off but that I should report for training as usual.
The world was still in shock and the roads were noticeably quieter when I made my way towards the training ground which is adjacent to Heathrow Airport. The sombre atmosphere was made worse when Ranieri told me that my blood test had shown a low iron count and that I was being given the day off. I hate not training, especially when I really needed to focus on something else to take my mind off other things.
I got in the car, called my mate Billy and drove east around the M25 to his house. We went for a run for an hour and when we got back I had a message from Eidur to say that everyone had been given Thursday off and some of the boys were going out for lunch.
Billy and I met them in the pub down the road from the training ground but by the time we got there, JT, Jody, Eidur, and Frank Sinclair were already finishing up their food. We stayed and had a couple of drinks before moving off to another pub. You don’t have to travel far to find one around the village so we settled down at a table and ordered some beers.
There was nothing unusual about the place. There were some other people in there eating and having a drink and while the general atmosphere was still touched by tragedy, everything seemed normal enough. We were getting more in the mood and with each round I suppose the noise level was rising. I doubt very much that we were the only people in the country who were looking for an outlet that day even if we chose the wrong way.
The company got more boisterous and we were itching for a change of scene so we moved on. Perhaps we should have decided to call it a day – especially when one of the lads got a tip to say that we were being followed by someone from the press. Unfortunately, we had gone beyond the stage where good sense was the obvious choice.
We breezed through another bar before deciding to head for the Holiday Inn just off the M4 exit for Heathrow. It was just after 5 o’clock and we had been at it for a few hours. They had Sky News on in the corner and some people were sat around waiting for answers the same as the rest of the world. I don’t imagine our entrance was graceful but we found a table away from the main area where we could carry on with the banter without affecting anyone else. We ordered some food and drink and were in the mood to have a laugh.
It was the wrong decision, a stupid thing to do on the day after so many people had lost their lives in America. I look back now and I realize how naive it was to put ourselves in that situation. There is no excuse. As high-profile footballers it was a very bad idea to go out drinking at such a sensitive time.
However, I can honestly say that we did not at any point abuse any Americans who were in that bar. We didn’t shout at them or moon at them. The most we were guilty of was being loud and a bit rowdy but we kept ourselves to ourselves. Of course, that was not how it appeared in the press.
Two days later we were called to a meeting in the gym at the training ground by the managing director of the club, Colin Hutchinson. The News of the World had taken details of the story, including ‘witness’ statements about us, to the club. Colin was waiting for us with a reporter and photographer from the paper and told us that we were being fined two weeks’ wages for breaking club rules.
He also explained that the reporter was there to get our side of the story so that we would at least have the opportunity to defend ourselves in print. What a joke. We went through what happened in the knowledge that it didn’t look good but in the hope that at least some of it might be printed. Some of it was – anything which incriminated us and helped stand up their ‘version’ from their ‘eyewitnesses’.
The pictures were even better. Each of those published had us looking like convicted criminals – I had been whacked in the eye at training earlier in the week and the bruise had coloured just nicely to make me look particularly guilty. The story was followed up by the inevitable wave of condemnation about footballers and the shame and disgrace of it all.
I knew, because no one felt more shame than I did. To compound my misery I received a call from