Craig Bellamy - GoodFella Read Free Page B

a pre-arranged spot so we could go home together.
    I’m not sure whether my own love of football followed on from my dad’s. Maybe. Or maybe I was just a naturally competitive kid. My brother, Paul, was two years older than me and I hung out with a lot of his friends. That made me into a better player very quickly. We used to play down the field at the bottom of my road. It was called the ABC Park and we played there constantly.
    It was a bit of a higgledy-piggledy park, shoehorned between the rows of houses on the estate. It sloped quite heavily from north to south. I’m not even sure why it was called ABC Park. I think it was because there were some climbing frames there and they had been labelled A, B and C to differentiate them from each other.
    There were no goalposts and there were so many kids playing that, most of the time, you couldn’t find a spare patch of grass. They’ve built a BMX track there now. I see articles about it in the Western Mail sometimes. The last one was about the fact that the council had had to put security guards there because gangs of kids were congregating and throwing stones at local houses. There’s graffiti sprayed on the garden fences that back on to it.
    I played my first match for my school, Trowbridge Juniors, when I was seven. My dad was surprised when he found out I’d been selected. Most of the kids in the team were a couple of years older than me and I was small for my age, too. I was skinny and under-developed but I was quick and clever and I was always desperate to win. My dad was still dubious about it but Paul told him how good I was, so he came to watch.
    We played against Gladstone Primary School from Cathays and I won a penalty when a kid tripped me in the box. Whoever got brought down for the pen usually took the spot-kick. Those were the rules in park football, anyway, so I thought it was mine. But this was serious stuff. They told me there was a regular penalty taker and it was my mate Stuart Solomon. The Gladstone goalkeeper had glasses. I thought we couldn’t miss but those specs were working wonders for him and he saved it. We drew the game and went away feeling very deflated.
    I soon got other opportunities to play. When we had our kickabouts down at ABC Park, a scout from Pentwyn Dynamos would turn up sometimes. We were miles away from Pentwyn, on the other side of the Eastern Avenue, so they must have been pretty desperate but they still wouldn’t consider me because I was too small. So my dad told me that if I got enough players together, he would help me start a team.
    I went around loads of kids’ houses, knocking on doors. My dad found someone who ran a team called Caer Castell, near Rumney High School, and I had soon found enough kids for us to start an Under-10s side there. Our first game, inevitably, was against Pentwyn Dynamos. We played on Rumney Recreation Ground and won 4-0 and I scored all four. That was the start for me. I played on Saturdays for the school team and on Sundays for Caer Castell and when I was nine or ten, I was selected for the Cardiff and District boys side. I played for Cardiff Schools, too. One cup game over two legs, we played against Deeside Schools and Michael Owen was playing for the opposition.
    I became a good player just by playing. By playing constantly and by playing with kids who were both older and better than me. I saw tricks other kids did and I had the ability to absorb what had just happened. I’d try to imitate it myself and then I’d practise what they had done. Then I’d try that trick on another kid.
    I still do that now. I never stop learning. I could see a 19-year-old kid do something today and I’d try it tomorrow in training. I think that’s given me an edge sometimes, that ability to innovate. My biggest concern with most young kids now is that they don’t have that edge to want to be better than their mate. You don’t see kids on the parks now, not the way it used to be anyway, and when