Recently I read a very old interview with one of Newcastle United%26rsquo;s greatest
and most underrated players, Jackie Sinclair. It was Jackie who, along with
Bobby Moncur, won the Geordies their last meaningful trophy - the Fairs Cup,
in 1969. He made a couple of goals and generally terrorised the Ujpest Dozsa
defence, doing his usual stuff.
I remember him well and with great respect - I saw him play once, towards the
end of his career, for Sheffield Wednesday at Ayresome Park in about 1971, I
would guess. He was getting on then, but still, midway through the second
half he set off on a mazy run through the Boro defence and put a 25-yard
rocket into the top right corner of the net. Pure class, the sort of goal
which, today, would have commentators approaching the stage of ejaculation
and secure him a %26pound;100,000-a-week pay packet. I thought of Jackie as a
midfielder or a winger, but he scored 53 goals in 113 games for Newcastle.
I mention him because he was, in style and ability, if not temperament, the
equivalent of Paul Gascoigne, but nobody made the remotest fuss about him.
His interview (with an old fan, I think) was full of humility and
good-natured grace. When Jackie hung up his boots he went straight back
where he came from, Scotland, and his old job down the pit. Nobody, at the
time, thought this unnatural. The last I heard of him he was a golf club
steward in the town of Dollar.
We all have sympathy for Gascoigne, who was sectioned last week under the
Mental Health Act %26ndash; a long overdue occurrence, some will have mused. It is
not Gascoigne%26rsquo;s fault that he plied his trade just as the top footballers
began to earn really silly money. Not really silly money by today%26rsquo;s
standards, of course, but pretty deranged. Nor is it just the money, of
course. The thing that really did for Gascoigne was the ludicrous adulation
laid at his feet, bucket-load after bucket-load of drivel, of which the most
frequent and least apt was %26ldquo;genius%26rdquo;. Gascoigne was a very good footballer,
at least the equal of Jackie Sinclair for a year or two, but it does not
take %26ldquo;genius%26rdquo; to flick the ball over the head of a Scotland defender with
the grace and mobility of a fridge-freezer. It takes a bit of skill and
chutzpah, and that%26rsquo;s it. But Gazza, like all our top players, was indulged
to a degree that must have led to a profound psychological imbalance. A
simple soul %26ndash; well, if we%26rsquo;re honest, a bit on the thick side %26ndash; bombarded
with intimations of his own invincibility, afforded the sort of adulation we
might, in earlier times, have given a Nobel Prize-winner or a long-serving
prime minister. And even in his decline, indulged again and again by TV
companies who filmed his moronic pranks and embarrassing, incomprehensible
interviews, by nonleague clubs who sought to exploit his name by pretending
to him that he might be a good manager, a man who has not uttered a sentient
thought in his entire life.
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