PSYCHOLOGISTS talk of a phenomenon called involuntary memory chains — the idea that something can trigger an unintentional recall of a string of memories, good or bad.
Anything can kick it off — a taste, a smell, a piece of music…
Neil Ruddock’s face.
At The Anfield Wrap’s offices we’ve got a load of memorabilia from Liverpool’s past – glorious and not so – from books, videos and match programmes, to photos, magazines and DVDs.
And the other day, there it was: Neil Ruddock’s face. Fittingly, he was wearing a colourful wig under a cap. He looks anything but a footballer you’d look to for a clean sheet.
The involuntary memory chain began.
Pass the pound, pissing himself on purpose during a game just for the ‘banter’, lamping Robbie Fowler, breaking Andy Cole’s legs, white suits, Julian Dicks, Paul Stewart, Istvan Kozma, Mark Walters, Torben Piechnik, Graeme Souness…
What a fucking mess. Both Ruddock, and Liverpool at that time.
The tales go on and on about Ruddock at Liverpool. Few of them reflect well on him, or the club.
A drinking culture, underachievement, poor decisions, poor diets, crap buys, players sold too early and often what appeared to be a severe lack of professionalism.
It was a decline in earnest from standards set over a long period of time – Liverpool slumping from a record of six league titles in 10 years from 1981 to 1991 to the current situation – none in 27.
The seeds were sown by buys like Ruddock and the culture that followed.
One story goes that Ruddock was meant to be working his way back to fitness on a running machine in the gym, but when the physio disappeared he went off for a cuppa and a bacon butty.
Five minutes before he returned, he went back, started jogging again and threw water over himself to look like he was sweating.
Such a laugh, eh? What a guy. Leading by example. Those kids at Melwood must have been so impressed.
I had the misfortune to go to a sportsman’s dinner once that Ruddock was speaking at. It changed none of my perceptions of the man. He aped the ‘where did it all go wrong’ quote of George Best – seemingly with little awareness of the irony – and despite the fact that he never came close to displaying the skillset of the legendary Northern Irishman.
Any hecklers were greeted with the standard ‘well what have you done in the game?’ reply – the stock answer of the banter-loving ex-pro.
As well as Ruddock being at the scene of some of the shittest results Liverpool produced in a lifetime – the Reds finished eighth having lost 16 in the league in 1993-94, a season when the man bought for a then record fee for a defender played in 39 of the 42 league games – Ruddock was also a player that seemed to mark the end of the idea of ‘a Liverpool player’.
By this, I mean there was an understood standard – a shared knowledge – of what it took to be worthy of the red shirt. We used to look at players at other clubs and go “he’s a Liverpool player” – he was our type, he had our style, he had the right attitude and attributes to cut it at Anfield.
Ruddock didn’t, clearly. And in the era he represented Liverpool he wasn’t alone.
Looking back, what grates almost as much is the trading on Liverpool’s name that followed, even revealing a ‘YNWA’ tattoo.
Really?
Yes, Ruddock played for us – in 152 games, scoring 12 goals and picking up a League Cup winners’ medal in 1995. But to suggest many people are happy about the fact is pushing it.
Ruddock was later hoovered up by a developing culture of professional football ‘banter’ – a moony-pulling, shit-joke cracking ‘top lad’ for Soccer AM; something that became a target for the ire of Half Man Half Biscuit in the brilliant Rock And Roll Is Full Of Bad Wools:
Enter Ruddock left
“More doughnuts” shout the crew
High art shall not ensue
Here, today, in this place
And our hapless singer’s band
Has just gone moribund
Stay tuned, following the break
Crazy Razor gonna get him in a headlock
Crazy Razor headlock
Why do people like it? Or think it’s funny? It’s not. Yet to Ruddock seemingly everything is a joke.
After only two games for Liverpool, he fractured Peter Beardsley’s cheekbone in three places playing in Ronnie Whelan’s testimonial against Newcastle.
Beardsley not unreasonably concluded it was Ruddock trying to prove he was a hard-man.
Ruddock went for the ‘banter’ in repsonse: “If anything the slight rearrangement of his face did Pete a favour…”
Oh, my sides.
On breaking Cole’s legs, he said: “I can only assume it was the way he fell.”
Such wit.
And what of generally pissing much of his career, and his dough, up the wall? What has Ruddock said about that?
“At 18, I was driven,” he once said. “But by my late 20s, I was overweight, drank and partied too much. I betrayed my wife and let my family down. I should have had the discipline to resist temptations.”
Indeed. There are more incidents that could be detailed but by now you get the picture.
Neil Ruddock's birthday today… pic.twitter.com/dEggLIIDtE
— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) May 9, 2017
It’s Ruddock’s birthday today. I’ll be raising no glasses to him. His Liverpool ‘highlight’ is scoring with his face in a 3-3 draw with Manchester United. A match which Liverpool trailed 3-0 after being pulled apart at the back.
It’s hardly the body of work of Ian Callaghan, Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard, Ian Rush, Alan Hansen and so on, is it?
The manager who signed Ruddock was sacked six months after he arrived. The manager who inherited him – Roy Evans – has talked about his difficulties in recruiting quality centre-halves when he took charge.
Souness doesn’t even offer a glowing reference in his 1999 book, Souness: The Management Years.
He says: “When I signed Neil Ruddock to play alongside Mark Wright I was confident I had the combination which would serve the club well over a long period of time. ‘Razor’ was big and not afraid to use his strength. He had the physique to frighten forwards, an accurate left foot, and he was strong in the air.
“He was a bouncy character, always game for a laugh, but perhaps that was his undoing. When I signed him he was exactly what I was looking for but when he looks back on his career I suspect he will realise he did not fulfill his potential.
“Not everything in his life was right. He had problems controlling his weight – maybe he liked a night out too much – and there were other factors which contributed to him not achieving as much as he should have.”
Top of the list of ‘other factors’ must surely be attitude. Everything was a joke. And everything still is. Team spirit is one thing, a winning mentality another. Ruddock had the wrong idea about one, and no idea about the other.
Meanwhile, those who truly love Liverpool look back with no longing to a period when a dressing room that once would unite to conquer the bloody world was filled with men who lacked the character, the will, the drive and the professionalism to carry the Liverpool name into another decade of winning.
Thanks then, Neil. Thanks for nothing. I’m going to bin that photo if it’s all the same. I’ve seen enough of that face to last me a lifetime – it’s an involuntary memory chain I’m desperate to break.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda Photo
Fully agree
Really liked that.
Remember once he reffed a school game in Formby (dads v Radio City). Straight after it was over to the Freshy were he downed a few strong lagers and regaled us with tales of his exploits as a geezer.
Sad thing is if he’d have applied himself he had all the attributes to be a good centre half.
Agree, a few years ago I was sat having a beer pre-match and Ruddock was working for some TV station. He ran into the pub, saw my pint, picked it up , necked it and said “thanks” before running out. People like that never change. Hence, he is never mentioned when discussing the greats of liverpools past .
I was a teenager, going the game with the scrapings of pocket money that my parents could barely afford and this clown was playing games whilst on £20k+ a week. I’ll never forgive him, and a good few others for that
He just didn’t care, plain and simple.
Can’t disagree. There have been loads of players, either bought in or via the academy, over the last 30 years not good enough for LFC but it’s not the players fault they were selected and I have no problem with any of them so long as they did their very best for the club. Ruddock always came across as a twat and it’s obvious he was a bad influence on the young team we had then. That whole period was so shite, I’ve erased most of it from my memory.
For what its worth I once flashed to let him pull out down the old Paradise Street. He didn’t thank me. You remember things like that…
Razor was an irresponsible clown and nowhere near the quality we needed – but sadly Souness was responsible for some poor recruitment and letting the LFC traditions slide. The best thing Razor did was turning down Cantona’s collar and offering out Roy Keane. Both plus points in my book! YNWA
That was great robbo- very well written.
Ah, nothing quite as satisfying as reading a bad review. Ruddock, Ince, but arguably Babb, and a few others. Messers. Britpop footballers. And let’s be honest here, were it not for the fact that they delivered on the field, that key saving grace, Macca and Robbie could easily have slipped into that moral maze. I’d query whether signing Ruddock instead of someone else was a sliding doors moment, but I don’t think Razor would fit through it.
Should’ve signed Keown at that time.
That’s actually quite tame compared to what could have been written. I despair whenever I think back to this era, we went backwards very, very quickly and never recovered. Too many people to point the finger at but you are right, Ruddock sums this period up really well.
Spot on mate.
“Not a Liverpool player.”
Plenty of them about at that time.
Souness was a proper Liverpool player so I still can’t get my head around some of the shit he saddled us with.
Julian Dicks……fucksake!
The irony is that his signing was seen as a hark back to the good old days when defenders were real hard men etc etc. In reality those defenders died out because the game, and the rules changed for the better. Loads of signings were made with this in mind (Nigel Clough the new Dalglish anyone) By the time we realised we were living in the past and a new breed of continental footballer was the vogue Utd and Arsenal were out of sight.
The ironic thing is that Ruddock would probably see it as a badge of honour to be seen as the face of where it all went wrong for Liverpool.
But as many are saying in the comments here (and twitter and facebook), he wasn’t alone in contributing to the decline. While Ferguson was sorting out any poor attitudes at Old Trafford and shipping out anyone who didn’t mend their ways despite their reputations, Liverpool were signing party boys year after year after year in the early to mid 90s.
More bouncy castle than bouncy character.
Quality Gareth. I lived in Southport at the time Ruddock played for LFC and you could guarantee every Saturday night he’d b out in town with several of the youngsters, getting pissed and just generally being his annoying self. Used to wind me up. Not much of a role model, except in the art of being a dick. Like you say, typical of everything that was wrong with LFC at that time.
Thought he was a great signing at the time. A definite improvement on nick tanner, torben piechnick an over the hill steve nicol and a very wobbly mark Wright and better than anything we have now.
I reckon he could have been a good player but couldnt be arsed and he wasnt alone.
Fowler,mcmanaman,Mcateer,scales,ruddock,collymore, rob jones, mark kennedy, we had some good players there but most of them undoubtedly let it all go to their heads.
Great writing. All true. The management at the time only had to take a look what was happening 30 miles down the road and how this culture ended so many careers prematurely in Liverpool and that lot all played into their 30’s.
Wanker of the highest order and still not learnt. Last outing was on a recent episode of “Can’t pay we’ll take it away”. The Mockney Beaut…..
He was a reduction of his time. Don’t know how old you were in the 90`s Gareth but all us the twenty somethings were “mad for it”. Luckily my like phase was spent in the anonymity of a university education and not in the glare of a professional football career.
To pick Ruddock out is unfair imho. He was a cast member in a spice boy pantomime that became a pastiche of itself. That could be said to be a metaphor for the 90’s themselves that had largely eaten themselves by 1997.
Further, in my experience those that joke the most and hide behind booze are often the most insecure. In this time of heightened awareness of mental health, it’s a shame you didn’t consider that angle.
Lastly, that facer goal against United was one of the highlights of drab era, and anyone who scores an equalizer against the Manchester after three nil down has some credit in the tank.
Product of his time
Then twenty soemthings
The Mancs
Damned predictive text…
Really really enjoyed that piece. What a waste. He had it, that’s the annoying thing. I met him once in a pub, mid season, on a Sunday, he was bladdered with Tony Warner. What a bell end
A top class central defender should have been the priority when we lost Mark Lawrenson through injury in 1987, i have never been able to understand why Kenny chose not to replace him. Alan Hansen was fighting a long term battle with injury and his magnificent career was coming to an end. Gary Pallister, who Liverpool had been linked with would have been ideal, or Martin Keown, both were not afraid to put their head in harms way and relished a tough physical battle. There was a period when it seemed that whenever the opposition got a corner it felt like a penalty, the crowd would groan and the opposition would send all of their players into our penalty area in anticipation of a goal.