Jermain Defoe: Death of my nan and brother Spurs me on

By Darren Lewis in Mirror Football Blog

Published 23:00 12/03/10

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In an age of the money grabbing, bad boy footballer Jermain Defoe is a refreshing antidote.

Time and again the Tottenham Hotspur striker has been hit by the kind of adversity which would leave many a young man feeling sorry for himself.

Yet time and again Defoe has risen above his setbacks to prove just why he remains a role model for millions of youngsters up and down the country.

In the last few years alone the east London-born marksman has been:

* Rejected by the former England coach Sven Goran Eriksson on the eve of the 2006 World Cup only for the nation to flop without him.

* Rejected by his former club boss Martin Jol and forced to prove himself again at Portsmouth in order to earn a move back to his current club Spurs.

* A target for unfounded police harassment after being repeatedly stopped behind the wheel driving in east London.

But all of that paled into insignificance behind the deaths, in successive years, of his beloved grandmother Mary in 2008 and his brother Gavin in 2009.

Mary played a massive role in Defoe's upbringing after mum Sandra gave birth to him aged 18.

Gavin, one of Jermain's four half-brothers, was a rising star as a DJ who had the stage name Esco Bars. He was killed by a blow to the head in a brutal street fight in Leytonstone, east London, last April. Jermain was a pallbearer at his funeral last July.

Yet he remains Tottenham's hottest striker this season with 25 goals in all competitions for his club and his country.

He explained: "I have to admit it has been difficult to stay focused at times. Over the last two years I have lost two people very close to me.

"Losing my nan hit me hard because she was like my second mum. She'd take the same approach to advising me and keeping me on the straight and narrow.

"She'd make sure I stayed focused and not get led astray, whether it was by friends or by girls. When I lost her nothing seemed important any more.

"When I was younger I'd go to St Lucia to see her every year to be around her. So 2008 was a tough year for me.

"Harry Redknapp, who was my manager at Portsmouth at the time, let me go back to the Caribbean to bury her. But I still miss her now.

"As for Gavin, well growing up there was me, Gavin, Shane and Junior on my Dad's side. He was the eldest and he was only a year older than me.

"It was devastating to get a phone call when I was training at Spurs last year saying that he'd got into a fight, had been hit over the head and was in intensive care.

"My mum turned up at the Tottenham training ground to tell me that he only had a couple of hours to live. I rushed down to the hospital and I basically stood there and watched him die.

"I can still see it now. He's 26 and he's on a life support machine. We are standing around his bed and there is nothing we can do. I am just standing there watching my brother die. Just like that.

"It had a massive impact on me. It was hard to understand how someone could just slip away from you at that age.

"I'd already wanted to be that much more motivated in terms of my football this year. To make this year that much more special. And yet all these bad things were happening.

"But I was lucky to have the right people around me - my mum, my cousins - to help me through it. And I still, somehow, felt that I could turn it into a positive. That I could make this my year.

"Since then I have wanted to do whatever it takes to make this into a good season. I mentioned it to my cousin Stefan back in August and after I hit five goals in the 9-1 win over Wigan in November he reminded me of it."

Defoe wants to mark the memory of his loved ones by helping Tottenham to reach the biggest club competition in Europe, the Champions League, for the first time in their history this season.

He added: "Helping a club with the history of Spurs to reach the Champions League would be a tribute to my brother and a tribute to my nan.

"There have been times this season where I have scored goals and I have wondered: 'Why do I feel so good, so strong in games?' Things are happening for me and I know they are looking down on me.

"I know they are guiding me and watching over me. Its weird but if I could do something special this season for a special club then it would be massive for me."

The England striker, who played in the recent 3-1 win over Egypt, added:

"I realised that as a footballer I am a role model when I got to the international stage.

"Its the highest level in football and you see that there are young kids who want to achieve things like you and who copy the things that you do.

"Growing up, I used to watch all of the England games and these days kids love football in the same way too. You try as a youngster to emulate the players you see on TV so yes, we are role models.

"That's why it was so frustrating to keep being stopped by the police for no reason last year near where I live in east London. People see that and they assume the worst but nothing could be further from the truth.

"When it first happened I thought it was a random check, the second time I thought it was a coincidence but then the third time the only conclusion to draw was harassment.

"I could see no other real reason for it. I wasn't breaking the law or doing anything untoward and yet I was being repeatedly stopped. And in almost every case they'd hardly say anything.

"My mum is a passionate person and she felt really strongly about it. Her belief is that I have done well to achieve what I have done despite being the product of a rough area and that I should hold my head up.

"I have never been arrested, I don't have a criminal record and so I know that there is, and never could be, a reason to be stopped by the police."

In fact, Defoe's own history shows a man destined for greatness almost as soon as he could walk.

And, as usual, there will be an extra special gift for mum Sandra because of the huge impact she has had on her son's rise to stardom.

He explained: "I've always had football in my family. My mum Sandra is the youngest of six - four girls and two boys - and both my uncles played for Caribbean teams.

"So my mum, as a girl, was always on the touchline watching her brothers and also my Dad play.

"She also used to tell me silly things like the fact that I was always destined to be a footballer because I used to kick around so much when she was pregnant with me.

"But to be honest I started kicking footballs around from the time I started walking. Mum told that when I was two she took me over to a park in Stratford, east London with a ball and just let me run around with it.

"While I was off on my own a random guy approached her and asked: "How old is your son?". She told him and he couldn't believe it.

"She remembers even now the guy telling her how unbelievable it was that a two-year-old could kick a ball around like that. He'd never seen anything like it before.

"Even then she didn't really realise the magnitude of what he was saying.

But the guy was adamant that at that age the ball control that I was showing - with both feet - was amazing.

"At school I was always playing for the age group a couple of years above me and at school games my mum would always get scouts approaching her about me - at school games. I was between seven and ten years old.

"I joined the Sunday League team Senrab, which produced quality players like John Terry and Ledley King and Ashley Cole.

"Again, the scouts would press their hards into my mum's hand and invite me to come and train with them. But I decided to go to Charlton because they had a track record at being really good with kids.

"Obviously growing up in east London was never easy. My mum and dad split up when I was at primary school and my mum was a single parent.

"In fact, it was really difficult for her because I was really active - a typical boy. I always wanted to play out on the streets, I had loads of energy and I couldn't concentrate in school. But she wanted the best for me and she wanted me to make something of myself.

"At the time it was the two of us in Custom House. But my mum refused to let her split - or anything else - hold me back. She was the one that used to take me training. She was the one that always bought my boots, my school clothes everything. She put herself second and me first.

"In fact my mum had to play that role as the father figure as well as a mother figure in my life. Even to this day she says the same things to me now that she said to me back then - regardless of the level that we have reached.

"And I say 'we' because its my mum's dream as well. Not just mine. When she realised that I wanted to succeed in football it became her dream as well. So even at this age she still pushes me, she still encourages me."

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