One hell of a ride

Bruce Grobbelaar was the clown prince of English football, but after the glory years with Liverpool came match-fixing allegations, an eight-year tussle with the Sun newspaper and bankruptcy. Now, broke but unrepentant, he is coaching a struggling South African team. Rory Carroll meets him

Wednesday December 29, 2004
The Guardian

Only weeks into a new life in a new job in a new city, and already everybody seems to know Bruce Grobbelaar. At the airport he bumps into a friend. On the way into town a pedestrian gives a cheerful wave, as does a motorist in the next lane. The club office is all smiles and handshakes. At the stadium it is a rugby day but the players on the field recognise the visitor on the touchline. "Howzit, Bruce!"

Two decades after the rubber-legs act in Rome, a decade after the allegations of match-fixing and two years after his financial ruin, the so-called clown prince of English football has wound up coaching a team on the southern tip of Africa, broke, unrepentant and defiant. "The Britons bankrupted me. I came to their country with £10 in my pocket and they gave me £1 back. But in between I had one hell of a ride."

Critics might amend that to say the Zimbabwean took his adopted country for one hell of a ride. But nobody says that here in his new home, South Africa, where Grobbelaar is more famous as a footballer than a crook.

The interview was supposed to have taken place several weeks earlier in Durban where Grobbelaar, 47, was coaching Manning Rangers, a mid-ranking premiership club, but they fired him after a string of poor results, so it takes place further down the coast in East London, where he has taken over the Umtata Bush Bucks. Almost midway through the season, they are fighting to avoid relegation.

Besides flecks of grey around the temples there is little physical change from the showman - the elastic eccentric, some called him - who made more than 600 appearances in 13 years at Anfield, winning six league titles, a European Cup, three FA Cups and three League Cups. "The most decorated goalkeeper in the league," he says.

Glory has not blossomed in South Africa. In five years he has coached six teams, including big hitters like SuperSport United, Seven Stars and Hellenic before moving on - and down - to poorer clubs. Apart from Manning Rangers he denies being fired from any of these jobs, but there was a cloud over each departure. Typically he would start well and push his new team up the league before faltering and dropping down. "He is sliding down the ranks," says Julia Beffon, sports editor of the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian. "I don't think he is a very good coach. Not very technically aware."

In a blaze of statistics and anecdotes, Grobbelaar begs to differ, casting himself as a savvy saviour of underperforming teams who is nevertheless cast aside by managers too dumb or stingy to keep him. The body language is expansive and, appropriately for a goalie, includes numerous references to landing on his feet. But the sense of victimhood is unmistakable. He is the victim of Ian Smith's Rhodesia which made him an army corporal in a doomed bush war against Robert Mugabe's guerrillas in the 1970s: "It was a struggle to survive." The victim of a supposed friend, Chris Vincent, who secretly videotaped their conversations about match-fixing: "I went into business with an arsehole." The victim of a vindictive newspaper, the Sun, which splashed on the allegations and defended them in an epic, eight-year legal battle: "I wouldn't even wipe my fucking arse with it." The victim of a legal lottery whereby juries refused to convict him and he won a libel award only for judges to overturn everything and ruin him: "You win in the court of law and yet they decide that you have to pay the opposition."

It happened in 1994. Unaware that his business partner, Vincent, had tipped off the Sun about his alleged involvement in accepting bribes, and that the hotel room they met in was rigged with recording equipment, Grobbelaar talked about throwing at least three games and trying to throw others. For a Liverpool game with Newcastle United in 1993 he said he received £40,000 from a betting syndicate. He was also filmed accepting £2,000 as part of a payment for throwing matches with his new club, Southampton.

Charged with conspiracy to corrupt and match-fixing, he was tried in 1997 alongside the former Wimbledon goalkeeper, Hans Segers, the former Aston Villa striker, John Fashanu, and a Malaysian businessman, Heng Suan Lim. Pleading innocence, he claimed he was attempting to obtain evidence of wrongdoing from Vincent before going to the police. His performance was as audacious as in any game, said commentators. The jury failed to reach a verdict and a retrial was ordered but again the jury could not decide. All four were acquitted and in 1999 the Zimbabwean went on to win an £85,000 libel award from a jury which plainly did not like the Sun.

Two years later the court of appeal ruled that the tabloid had suffered a miscarriage of justice and overturned the award. Grobbelaar went to the House of Lords, which reinstated the jury verdict but slashed his damages to £1 and ordered him to pay the Sun's huge legal costs. The law lords were not convinced he kept his part of the bargain and let in goals but said he undermined the integrity of the game by acting "in a way in which no decent or honest footballer would act".

By this time the goalkeeper had played his way down the English league, keeping goal for minnows, and moved into coaching. "I felt the world had been taken from underneath me." Pursued by the Sun's trustees, earlier this year he was officially declared bankrupt over his failure to pay the tabloid £500,000 in legal costs. "I haven't any money. Anything I'd earn in England they'd take. Here in South Africa I'm scrimping." With his houses in his estranged wife's name, could he not try to negotiate an out-of-court settlement with the Sun? A growl. "I don't talk to scum." Millionaire or pauper, he is the same person, he says, adding solemnly: "Greed is the worst thing."

So here he sits in his favourite restaurant in East London, watching ships sail up the Buffalo River, sipping a soft drink, munching pickled fish, flirting with the waitress. These days he nips across the border to his native Zimbabwe to visit friends and play golf. Two decades ago he infuriated Mugabe by branding his liberation movement "terrorist", but was forgiven and called on to coach the national team. He was recently offered the job again but declined in a wrangle over payment. Not wanting to extinguish that option, Grobbelaar turns cagey when asked about Zimbabwe's troubles. "I find it sad. People are not free to speak their minds. But I'm not one to judge what's happening there."

He has won his first two matches with the Bush Bucks, talks of taking them to the top of the premiership next season and of staying in East London for at least five years. But clearly he pines for more. More money, more attention, more of the old days.

He reminisces about that famous night at Rome's Olympic stadium in 1984 when Liverpool and Roma went to penalties to decide the European cup final. As Francesco Graziani prepared to take his kick, the figure between the sticks wobbled his knees in a parody of terror. Unnerved, the Italian missed, and another cup was on its way to Anfield. "The idea came when I bit the net before his kick. It felt like spaghetti so I did spaghetti legs."

Grobbelaar splutters at suggestions it was not very sportsmanlike. "When you go out on to that field it's going to be war. Sportsmanship is playing to the best of your abilities and then, afterwards, shaking your opponent's hand."

From the Rhodesian African Rifles to Merseyside, from the hero in a green shirt to the villain on video, from rags to riches to (relative) rags. You can only agree with him: it has been one hell of a ride.