Wally meets... Clarke Carlisle

By Mike Walters

Published 21:52 26/02/10

• 

Warming his hands around a full teapot to beat the biting cold, Britain’s brainiest footballer waited for the feeling in his fingers to return.

“Raynauds disease,” muttered Clarke Carlisle. “Cold weather stifles the circulation. Can’t feel my fingers or my ears. When the feeling comes back it’s agony - not just needles and pins, more like knives and daggers.”

Burnley defender Carlisle’s brush with frostbite, as he joined teenagers setting off on an orienteering expedition with their maps and compasses, was not the first time he was out of his comfort zone this week. Nor the last time his survival instincts will kick in this season.

On Countdown, the literary graveyard of daytime TV, he blew away football’s image as spiritual home of the lone syllable. Demonic and inane, once intellectual properties of Premier League drama queens, were among Carlisle’s answers in Dictionary Corner.

Now, after Jeff Stelling’s jokes and Rachel Riley’s unfeasibly tight outfits, comes the biggest conundrum of all: how to stop the Clarets making a swift return journey to the Championship.

They have taken fewer points from their last 14 Premier League games than Carlisle scored for an eight-letter word on Countdown, and if they can’t take three points off doomed Portsmouth today, five consonants and five vowels will spring readily to mind - relegation.

“This is the business end of the season,” said Carlisle, revived by his brew. “Back in August, we pulled off one or two results people deemed as shocks, but now we can see who our real enemies are and where it’s imperative that we pick up points.

“Portsmouth have their own problems, of course, but we are under no illusions - we’re in that fight for 17th place. We know who we’re looking out for, and who we need to beat to keep our heads above water.”

Of course, relegation battles are a piece of cake for Countdown veterans. Winning football matches is simple when you have 30 seconds to unscramble nine letters of dyslexia.

“I have played in front of 80,000 people at Wembley, no problem, but I was falling to pieces in that TV studio,” said Carlisle. “Facing 150 pensioners from the blue rinse brigade, my mouth dried up, I couldn’t get my words out and I could feel myself crumbling under pressure. But at least I won a couple of games and scored 100 points on Thursday.”

There was a time in Carlisle’s life when the most dangerous bottles contained something more intoxicating than blue rinse. A reformed alcoholic, he is keen to consign that dark, self-destructive phase to the past and he has turned down countless interview requests for lurid accounts of his previous incarnation on the sauce.

Now, instead of relying on team-mates to cover up for his folly, he is a model for footballers given a second chance: clean, articulate, well-rounded. Oh, and by the way, he can play a bit.

When Sheffield United were launching their futile air raids at Wembley last May, and Manchester United were laying siege to Turf Moor in the first week of the season, Carlisle was on the front line.

He said: “When I look back on some of the things I’ve done, I’m not proud of them, but my life experiences have made me the person who sits before you, warming his hands on a teapot over a brew, today.

“Those experiences do not prepare you for the intensity of a big derby, a play-off final or a relegation battle because football brings its own pressures.

“I’ve been involved in three promotion campaigns and a couple of relegation struggles, and sometimes I struggle to sleep the night before important games, but I’ve learned to approach every game as if it was my last, as if your whole career depends on it. And I should know.”

Ian Holloway, then in charge at QPR, was the manager who chose perceptively to confront Carlisle’s drink problem with velvet glove rather than iron fist.

Take a bow, Ollie. Take note, hanging judges who would have drummed a wayward soul out of the game.

Carlisle said: “The lowest point was the moment of realisation, the awakening when you become aware of the damage you are doing to yourself and other people around you.

“It’s a bad moment because you realise what a t*** of a person you have become, and it was a lonely place. I was lucky that, when I hit rock bottom, I had a manager who treated me more fairly than I deserved.

“Instead of tearing me off a strip like a naughty schoolboy, ’Ollie’ was big enough to admit he didn’t know how to handle my situation - but he knew somebody who did. He put me in touch with the Sporting Chance clinic, and I’ve never looked back.

“That was eight years ago, and thankfully I’ve left it all behind. It’s time to let go of that period of my life - I’m a happy and contented family man now.”

Religion has helped Carlisle, 30, to sustain his sobriety. Church-goer and God-fearing, he is a proud Christian whose season has been dominated by the biblical drama of Owen Coyle’s defection to relegation rivals Bolton.

While ’Judas’ Coyle may yet be remembered by Burnley’s unkind tendency as the rat who joined a sinking ship, Carlisle is firmly in the ’Moses’ camp - those who still lionise him for leading Burnley out of the wilderness.

He said: “The ’Judas’ tag is really harsh on Owen because the man didn’t just work wonders for this club - he made the whole town rally to our cause.

“He performed miracles here - that’s how I will always remember Owen Coyle. Most managers only stay in one place until a bullet comes along with their name on it, but he belongs to a much rarer breed - he left of his own accord because he was wanted elsewhere, and who am I to begrudge him that privilege?“

Privilege? Nine letters? That’s worth 18 points on Countdown. Roughly the number required to keep Burnley up.

*Clarke Carlisle was speaking at a Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme run by Burnley as part of the Barclays Premier League’s Creating Chances initiative.

Fancy winning £3,000 for FREE this month? Play Mirror Football Streak for your chance to win cash prizes! Start predicting now!