#2Sides: My Autobiography (6 page)

Unfortunately, it was no wind-up.

Looking back, I know Ashley was under pressure. I’ve thought long and hard about this and wondered how Ashley could have played it differently. What he should have said to John was: ‘please keep me out of this because it’s going to ruin my relationship with Rio if I go with you, or ruin my relationship with you if I go against you, and I don’t want either of those things.’ At that point, as a man, John Terry could have said: ‘I respect that – thanks,’ or ‘But Ash, I’ve not fucking done
anything
! Please can you come on my side and speak to them?’ At that point Ashley could have come to me and said: ‘Ri, he ain’t said it, man,’ and I’d have believed him. Just have the conversation like a man! We’ve known each other since we were kids! He should have come to me as my friend and explained that he was in an awkward position. But he never did any of those things.

Instead I had to call – and he still didn’t understand. In fact, he reckoned I was out of order for contacting him. I said, ‘Ash, what are you doing? My little brother’s going through hell, there’s
bullets through my Mum’s letter box, windows getting banged in, and you think
I’m
out of order for ringing you? What world are you living in?’ I tried to get him to see it from my perspective. ‘What if
your
brother was going to court, and getting hammered in the media, and his career was on the line? Don’t you think
you
would be upset with
me
if I was going to court against you? I’d expect you to call me.’ But he just didn’t get it. Or he did get it but wasn’t strong enough to take himself out of the equation. He kept saying: ‘I don’t want to be a part of this.’

I said: ‘Well, you are part of it, you’ve made yourself a part of it.’

The FA panel eventually decided Ashley’s evidence ‘evolved’ over time to help John’s case. That was a polite way of putting it. Ashley refused to give me a coherent explanation; he never gave me a definitive yes or no. All he kept saying was ‘but I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know what happened, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to go to court.’ I was like, ‘well in that case
why the fuck are you going to court?
’

Our final communication was by text. Just before the trial started at Westminster Magistrates Court, I sent him a message telling him he had a choice: ‘You’re my mate and you’re John Terry’s mate. You know both our families. So either go into court and tell the
exact
truth of what happened, or don’t go in there at all. You have to make a choice.’

‘I’ve not got a choice,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told I’ve got to go.’

I said, ‘well, if you do go just know this: we will never talk again. You know what happened. You saw it with your own eyes. It’s not rocket science. I know you never wanted to be involved. Just make your decision.’

‘You think I want to come off my holidays to come to court and go through this shit?’ was his reply. ‘To be involved in it when I don’t have to? But that’s what I’ve been told to do.’

I said, ‘alright, then. Go. Do it.’ And that was it.

I was furious and so disappointed with him. That’s what I was feeling when I re-tweeted a comment somebody made on Twitter about Ashley being a ‘choc ice’: black on the outside, white on the inside. I look back now and think maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but it’s what I thought and felt at the time. That’s the problem with social media: if you’re impulsive, you can’t turn back the clock. The sad thing is that Ash had always been a good guy and I’d always got on really well with him – he’s a nice geezer. We’d been on holiday together; I was at his stag do. We’d both had our problems in the media over the years and found each other’s shoulder to lean on. But this one moment has ruined that relationship because I simply could not see my brother go through shit and have one of my so-called mates going to court against him.

I think one day Ashley will understand it properly and feel bad. He’ll realise his mistake. And we’ve all made mistakes. I certainly have. There are things I look back and I think I could have been more decent in that situation. So Ashley will get to a certain point in his life, and realise he should at least have rung me to tell me he was going to court. I would have respected that a lot more. If he’d said: ‘This is how it is, I’ve got no choice,’ I’d have said ‘well, you’re a fucking idiot, but at least you’ve rung me and told me.’ He’ll look back and be gutted; he’ll regret the way he handled it. I can see it was difficult for him and I think the person or people who put him in that position are as much to blame.

As to my relationship with John, there has been a lot of misunderstanding about that as well.

He, too, could have come to me or to Anton. If John had said: ‘I think I made a mistake, can we sort this out?’ we would have
been the first to say: ‘you know what? You’ve been an idiot, but we all make mistakes. I’m not perfect myself. Just don’t let it happen again, man.’ John would’ve made a public apology or whatever and the case would have been quickly forgotten. The problem was that he tried to run away from what he’d done. I can’t forgive the way he allowed that to ruin friendships: his friendship with myself, my friendship with Ashley … all gone to waste.

I’ve never actually spoken to John about the case. What was the point? I’d seen what he’d done. We’d been teammates with England for years. And we could have been again. We weren’t close but we’d had nights out, texted or spoken on the phone every now and then. I thought there was always an edge to him, but we got on OK. John certainly never showed himself to me to be racist. I take people at face value. I’ll always assume that people are alright until proved otherwise. I never had anything bad to say about John. Of course, there was a club rivalry, but we got on fine on the pitch. Then this happened. But I’m still not convinced he is a racist or was even
being
racist.

John obviously handled the situation badly. He should have just rung my brother and said, ‘I’m sorry, man. I said it. But I ain’t a racist. If I could take it back I would.’ I’d have thought: you know what? He’s a fucking stand-up guy. I’ll shake his hand. I’d have told him: ‘I think you’re a prick for saying it, but you’ve actually come and manned up.’ I’d have said, ‘yeah, alright.’ And I’d probably have got hammered for it. Some people would have said I was a sell-out for even shaking his hand and accepting his apology. And I wouldn’t have cared. But John was never man enough to say any of those things.

The whole thing has made me look at Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela with even more admiration than before. Mandela is one of my heroes because of the way he forgave people. One of
the highlights of the trip to South Africa in 2010 was meeting him just before the World Cup. The whole team went, and I remember John being as impressed by the great man as any of us. One of the things I always think is: this business was
nothing
compared to what Nelson Mandela went through in South Africa. He was treated like shit for decades. He went to prison for 27 years. And yet he found the strength to forgive the people who did that to him. How did he do that? Because I find it impossible to forgive or forget the pain John put my family through. That was the heart of the matter. Whatever he had or hadn’t said became almost a sideshow. I sat there thinking: he was my mate, my teammate, we played 30 or 40 games for England together. We’d competed against each other for years. We weren’t best mates but we were football buddies. And he just sat there and watched as my brother went through all this because of his stupidity. That was the betrayal.

I would still have been happy to play for England with him. But that possibility got lost in the grey areas of my relationship with the FA. We’ve had good and bad times over the years, the FA and I. They banned me for eight months over missing a drugs test in 2003; they fined me £60,000 for my ‘choc-ice’ tweet. But they eventually did the right thing by banning John for four matches. Personally, after everything that happened, I thought he should’ve got the same punishment as Suarez. But at least the FA showed they weren’t happy with what happened. In fact, giving Terry a ban at all was quite a strong and bold considering he hadn’t been convicted in the court case.

But then it got confusing again because the FA let him play for England. What message did that send? What I didn’t like was that people then automatically assumed that if he played for England, then I couldn’t play for England. They seemed to think we couldn’t be on the same pitch together. But it wouldn’t have
been a problem for me. I’ve played with people I didn’t like for years. There were people at Manchester United I wouldn’t go for a drink with, would never call or text. But I played with them. You’re professional about it. If a person can help me win, I’ll play with him no problem. It’s not like we have to go for dinner together. I would probably have gone to see John and said: ‘Listen, we’re never going to be mates again, but let’s just work together to make England a better team.’ We would have had a working relationship, and it would have been fine. But no one ever asked.

I found that pretty extraordinary because I’d let it be known. People around the club would ask: ‘Would you play with him?’ and I’d say: ‘Yeah. I ain’t got a problem.’ I wanted to win and play for England. Hodgson should at least have asked: ‘Could you play with John Terry?’ If I said ‘No,’ then, OK, they’ve established that Rio is out of the equation – or John Terry is out of the equation. Then they can pick one of us. But that conversation never took place!

I just think it could all have been handled much better. But I never showed my hand over it because I don’t want people to see I’m feeling bad. People think I’m happy-go-lucky. If people asked how I was feeling I would go: ‘I’m alright, man. I’m cool.’ Then they’d go: ‘but don’t you think John Terry is a better player than you?’ That shit hurt. I want to play for my country and I should have had 100 caps. Then, eventually, when I sorted out my back problems, and I was playing
really
well, a clamour started for me to be back in the England squad. At that point, at the very last minute, just before Euro 2012 Roy Hodgson comes and says he wants me be in the squad!

That was another case of bad communication – and bad timing. I’d had an injury that almost finished my career but had managed to sort it out with a regular course of injections. I then had to schedule those injections and, since I was no longer being picked for England,
I’d chosen the international break. Just before one of those, all of a sudden, Roy Hodgson asked me to come back to the England squad. At that moment I had to say no because of my treatment. People said I rejected England but that wasn’t the case at all.

One thing the case did clarify was who we could rely on. At the height of the nastiness, people were criticising us, saying, ‘it’s only a comment, let it go.’ I’d say: ‘You let it go! I can’t let it go because it’s too important to let go.’

When my Mum fell ill I was in Manchester most of the time. I couldn’t even sit with her at the hospital for long, just days here and there, sometimes only a few hours. And my Dad … well, the entire time I know he wanted to explode. He had to watch his son almost wasting away and being vilified in the media and he couldn’t defend him.

In the middle of all this, Sir Alex Ferguson was brilliant. He sent Mum flowers and spoke to her on the phone. That’s the touch he’s got. No one else in the game that I’ve met has it. He’d ring her regularly, just to say, ‘Are you OK?’ It was his personal touch, from the heart. And my Mum would call me and tell me about it, and be so moved. It really gave her a boost. Fergie probably didn’t even know how much that meant.

Mum and Dad showed solidarity together going to court with Anton every day. And Jamie Moralee, who’s Anton’s agent as well as mine, went to court every day. That was impressive: a white guy going in, day in day out, on a race case on behalf of a black guy. That’s putting yourself in the firing line. Jamie has a family: what if some racist pig comes and knocks on his door? That’s the type of shit you’ve got to acknowledge. That took guts and Jamie has guts.

I wish I could say the same for some of the people we expected more from. At the time of the trial, rather late in the day, Kick
It Out came to Mum and said, ‘What can we do? We’re here to provide support.’

‘Support? Great,’ said my Mum. ‘You can walk into that court room with us.’

And they said ‘Oh, we’ll send someone as an observer.’

‘No that’s not what we need,’ said my Mum. ‘Don’t send some suit no one knows and no one sees. Send your people in T-shirts to walk in with us. Stand with us so people know this a racism case and you’re here on our side.’

‘Oh no, we can’t do that,’ came the reply. They refused.

So Mum said: ‘In that case, get out of my house, and don’t fucking come near us again.’ In the event, they did send a guy called Danny Lynch to the trial – in a suit – and no-one in the press reported his presence. I think Mum was right.

With Kick It Out I felt it was pure lip service. They were useless. So were other organisations. Outside the court, I saw Clark Carlisle of the PFA doing interviews. I said: ‘Come in the courtroom.’

‘Oh I can’t be seen to be going in there.’

‘What do you mean? You should be going in there supporting John
and
my brother.’ I didn’t say ‘come and support my brother.’ I said this a racism case so come in and support three of your players who are members, who put money into your organisation every year.

‘Oh, we can’t … We can’t get involved like that.’ Why not? You’re standing out here doing interviews for your documentary! What the fuck’s that about? When shit gets real, what happens? Where are you? Where are these people?

Months later, a year after the original incident, 3 months after the court case, after all the horrible things we’d had to go through, Kick it Out organised their T-shirt weekend. They wanted
everyone to wear a T-shirt saying ‘One Game, One Community.’ As if everything was fine now. Problem solved. They asked me if I was going to wear the T-shirt. ‘Are you crazy? Not a chance!’ If they weren’t willing to go into the court room with us, then I wasn’t willing to go through the charade of wearing their T-shirt. I know it was tit-for-tat but if I’d worn that T-shirt, my Dad wouldn’t have spoken to me. Mum probably would have spoken to me, but she would have been deeply disappointed. And I’d disappointed my Mum and Dad too many times in my life to do it this time.