Still the life and soul: Neil Razor Ruddock
- Legendary former defender looks back on colourful career
- No regrets at being a ’one-cap wonder’
- Loving life on the after-dinner speaking circuit
Neil ’Razor’ Ruddock in his Liverpool Days
SPORT CAREERS Head of Content IAIN KING had a close shave as he went head to head in an interview with feared football hard man Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock…and lives to tell the tale.
HE was the world’s most expensive defender…for a week.
Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock looks out across the splendour of the Mar Hall fairways in sun-kissed Renfrewshire and recalls those glory days.
Aglinting smile rips across his craggy, stubbled features like the studs througha striker’s sock.
When you sit and talk football with the larger than life former Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool defender as I did over two fun-filled nights at the John Hartson Foundation golf gathering it’s easy to forget just how good a player he was.
Thesedays Razor hams it up on the after-dinner circuit with tales of crunchingtackles and off-field scrapes. The birds, the bust-ups and the booze.
His schtick is slick, the patter engaging but it’s scratching the surface of a footballer who once had Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness,Glenn Hoddle and Brian Clough chasing his signature when he decided to quit Spurs.
Those legends of the game saw a tough and uncompromising stopper who could fizz passes into the feet of his team-mates with his wand of a left foot.
He shrugged: ’’Listen, you don’t captain Southampton,Spurs, Liverpool and West Ham if you can’t pass the ball.
’’At Spurs I played one of the best seasons of my life and it won me my move to what I consider to be the best football club in the world, Liverpool.
’’I cost them £2.5million and for a week it’s true I was the most expensive defender in the world until Des Walker moved to Sheffield Wednesday from Sampdoria for £2.7m and blew me out of the water!
’’I fell out with the owner Alan Sugar at Spurs and I had Keegan at Newcastle,Dalglish at Blackburn, Souness at Liverpool, Hoddle at Chelsea and Clough at Nottingham Forest all chasing me.
’’I promised them I would speak to everyone but when I met Souness at Anfield that was it, I loved him.’’
The steely former Scotland captain was toiling as a manager to reach the heights he had scaled as a player on Merseyside after his shock departure from the Rangers hotseat.
In Ruddock he saw a kindred spirit, a player with burning intensity, driven to win football matches.
Razor recalled: ’’Graeme was still the best player in the Friday fives games and instead of telling you that you were dropped for the Saturday he would just pick you in the other team from him and two-foot you in a tackle and put you out for a week!
’’Souness had been my hero as a kid and when he wanted me that was it.
’’I saw him make a speech in Liverpool a while back where he went back and told the fans how sorry he was at how it had worked out for him as manager there.
’’He said he felt he had let them down and the place just erupted, it was very emotional.’’
Ruddock would spend five often controversial years at Anfield before quitting for West Ham.
He revelled in the high-octane world of the English Premier League and had some jousts with some of the best strikers the game has seen.
Yet he confessed: ’’If I was playing today I would have a lot of problems with the refs because I liked to be allowed my free kick at a striker!
’’You don’t get those now and even when you are shoulder to shoulder with a player it is a booking.
’’I played against Iain Dowie, Alan Shearer and John Hartson, guys I respected but if there was one thing better than beating your mates it was ing hurting them as well!
’’I played against Dowie when he was at Crystal Palace and I remember telling our club photographer to keep an eye on us because I was going to smash him’
’’I cleaned him out in the first tackle then gave the snapper the thumbs up. He got the perfect shot and when it was printed up I autographed it and sent it to Dowie.
’’Iain loves the fact that he took one on his chest and volleyed it into the top corner in that game but I couldn’t care less. I still smashed him.’’
Ruddock’s battle with his weight and his off-field capers hampered an England career that saw him earn just one cap in a 1-0 friendly win over Nigeria in 1994.
Terry Venables gave the defender his proudest moment and typically Razor refuses to treat being a one-cap wonder as a negative when he assesses his career.
He reasoned: ’’I played for England and I had Gary Pallister and Tony Adams in front of me and they were pretty decent players so I can’t nurse having just one cap as a regret.
’’After all I played for England at EVERY level and not many players can say that.
’’Look,I tussled with Eric Cantona and found he was the only Frenchman who liked a ruck!
’’I played against Dennis Bergkamp and Gianfranco Zola and it kind of frustrates me, although I do play up to the hard man image, that some people think I couldn’t play.’’
Divorce, Porsches, blondes, bankruptcy. Ruddock has lived a life less ordinary with no apologies and now tackles audiences on the after-dinner circuit with the same ferocity he showed on the pitch.
He is the life and soul of the party each year when he gives his time and presence to the Hartson Foundation golf days and for all the front-page headlines and the I’m a Celebrity appearances when you sit down for a drink that child-like love for football remains.
He smiled: ’’I played 501 top team games and my career was built on my early day sat Southampton when I had the likes of John Burridge, Russell Osman and Jimmy Case teaching me the ropes.
’’We had Matt Le Tissier, the Wallace brothers Ray, Danny and Rod and a young Alan Shearer up front. It was some team.
’’I get a buzz talking about those days and all that happened to me in my career.
’’Look I was captain material. I was used to getting up in front of a dressing-room and inspiring people and my life now is just an extension of that.
’’The bottom line is I find it easy to do the after-dinner talks because I am ing hilarious!’’
Still the life and soul: Neil Razor Ruddock
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