Bruce Grobbelaar

[TheHowieLama]

Telegraph had extracts from that new book Red Machine, this one had me laughing out loud on the train

 

 

 

more interesting stuff in the article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/10366731/Liverpool-FC-book-extract-Bruce-Grobbelaar-on-how-he-broke-Steve-McMahons-nose-...-twice-in-one-night.html

 

Barnes had some insight on Kenny's coaching techniques.

[xerxes]

A great character and a fine keper on his day. The circumstances which led up to the trial were fascinating to say the least.

[lifetime fan]

Bruce has said today that LFC will sign a "big name in January".

 

Just reading through this thread, shame he's not more highly thought of as a red, unless people still think he's guilty!

 

How would Bruce have a fucking clue?

 

The club didn't know we were going to make a big signing in the summer.

[Alan Sex]

Bruce Grobbelaar was a fairly big name for a player.

[Scrump]

Bruce Grobbelaar: ‘How many people did I kill? I couldn’t tell you’

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/oct/01/bruce-grobbelaar-interview-donald-mcrae

 

Bruce Grobbelaar: ‘How many people did I kill? I couldn’t tell you’

The former Liverpool goalkeeper on his traumatic experiences in Zimbabwe’s war of independence, Heysel and Hillsborough, and the match-fixing trials which tainted his reputation

Before we reach the match-fixing trials which ruined his reputation, or remember the 13 major trophies he won as Liverpool’s goalkeeper in 14 staggering years, we start with war in Africa. Bruce Grobbelaar was a teenager when he was conscripted into the Rhodesian army in 1975 and plunged into Zimbabwe’s war of independence. His booming laughter fades and, as haunting memories cloud Grobbelaar’s face, it becomes easier to understand the eccentricities and mistakes which defined him.

 

He winces as he remembers how one of his fellow white soldiers mutilated the bodies of black freedom fighters. “This guy would cut an ear off every man he killed. He kept the ears in a jar. And he had quite a few jars. His family had been brutalised so he wanted revenge.”

 

The 60-year-old pauses before describing the moment he first killed a man. “My first time was at dusk. As the sun sinks you’re seeing shadows in the bush. You cannot recognise much until you see the whites of their eyes. It’s you or them. You shoot, you drop and there’s overwhelming gunfire. You hear voices on your side: ‘Hey, corporal, I’m hit.’ You whistle to shut them up otherwise we’re all getting killed. When the firefight is finished you see bodies everywhere. The first time everything in your stomach comes up through your mouth.”

 

How many people did he kill? “I couldn’t tell you.”

 

It sounds like he killed many men? “Yes. This is why I’ve always lived my life for today. I can only say sorry for the past. I can’t change it.”

 

The psychological trauma was acute and Grobbelaar describes how two soldiers he knew took their own lives when, after completing their conscription, they were all told to do another six-month tour. “They killed themselves simultaneously in adjoining toilets in the barracks. They couldn’t face it.”

 

Grobbelaar believes that football “saved” him. “It kept me away from the dark thoughts of war.”

The Rhodesian army were fighting to preserve minority rule but Grobbelaar was different to most white soldiers. Football had made him a cult hero in the black townships. “The fans called me Jungleman. They said this young guy’s not white. He’s black in a white man’s skin.”

 

After he played for clubs in Durban and then Vancouver he fulfilled his dream of finding his way into English football. He was transferred to Crewe and yet, hearing that Bob Paisley was coming to watch him before possibly signing him for Liverpool, he did not temper his warm-up routine. Grobbelaar ran out with an umbrella, walked on his hands and jumped on the crossbar.

 

Why didn’t he compromise and at least leave the umbrella? “It was raining. I asked the tea lady, Mavis, if I could borrow her umbrella.”

Grobbelaar was devastated when Crewe’s manager, Tony Waddington, told him Paisley had left the ground in disbelief before the game even started. Yet Liverpool’s scouts were so impressed by the madcap keeper they badgered Paisley into buying Grobbelaar. Despite winning six league championship medals, three FA Cups and the European Cup, Grobbelaar was derided often as a clown. Yet he was a good goalkeeper at his most concentrated and Liverpool would have discarded him if they did not believe in his talent.

Liverpool’s “Scottish mafia”, Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Alan Hansen, were mercilessly witty and unforgiving. Hansen would not talk to Grobbelaar for a week after he made an error while the “ruthless” Paisley delayed telling him that his dad had died five days previously.

“I still scratch my head as to why he kept it from me until after the game [the Intercontinental Cup final against Brazil’s Flamengo in Toyko]. Bob said: ‘You can go to your father’s funeral, but be back by Friday.’ The funeral was on the Thursday. I flew business class from Tokyo to Paris to Johannesburg and back to Heathrow. When I got my next pay cheque there was nothing left. I paid for my own trip to the funeral. That’s how ruthless they were. Not much compassion.”

 

Grobbelaar, however, captures Liverpool’s great camaraderie. He describes sharing a room with Steve Nicol who would spend the night before every game drinking beer and eating crisps in bed. “Nicol was a phenomenal player. We all played hard, lived hard. Terry McDermott would have umpteen pints of lager. But next day at training he’d be at the front.”

 

When Liverpool were at their most majestic they were drinking quantities which would shock any Premier League team today. If they won away, as they usually did, Grobbelaar would restrict himself to three beers. Yet if they lost he would sink a dozen beers on the long journey home “to quench the anguish, to kill the sorrow”.

Before the European Cup final against Roma in 1984 they went on a break to Tel Aviv and a drunken brawl among the Liverpool players was seen as evidence of a broken team by the Italian press. Yet in the tunnel, waiting to play the Italians in their own intimidating stadium in Rome, Souness roused his teammates into singing Chris Rea’s I Don’t Know What It Is, But I Love It. The Roma players were stunned when the singing became even more raucous as they emerged.

In the penalty shootout Grobbelaar produced his famous spaghetti-legs danceon the goal‑line. Francesco Graziani missed his penalty and Grobbelaar raced across the pitch in celebration. Liverpool only had to score their final penalty to win the European Cup. Amid the delirium Joe Fagan instructed Alan Kennedy to take the kick assigned to Grobbelaar. “I thank my lucky stars I wasn’t the fifth penalty-taker as planned. If I had missed it, I would have been the fall guy.”

 

His happiness and success at Liverpool was blighted by the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters. Heysel, when 39 Juventus fans died before the 1985 European Cup final, affected him even more than war. “It was worse. In the bush you knew what could happen. At Heysel it was innocent people. To hear the crumbling wall and the falling bodies was terrible.”

 

Grobbelaar was scarred deeply by Hillsborough in 1989. His book offers a distressing account of everything he saw – as the player closest to the 96 Liverpool fans crushed and suffocated to death. “I was near gate number 13 and there was this soft sound – like air coming out. I saw the faces squashed against the fence. I went to get the ball and shouted to the policewoman: ‘Open the effing gate.’ She said: ‘I haven’t got the key.’ When the ball came back a second time, I shouted again. I saw they had a key and people spilled on to the ground. I kicked the ball out and ran to the referee. That’s when the barrier went over and the bodies came down. I could hear the air coming out of them. One of the faces squashed against the fence belonged to a girl called Jackie. I had given her that ticket but luckily she survived. I saw her last night at the book signing.”

Perhaps he saw so much carnage and death that Grobbelaar lost his bearings. His book offers a detailed rebuttal of the Sun’s match-fixing allegations against him in 1994. After two protracted trials which failed to deliver a verdict, Grobbelaar, John Fashanu and Hans Segers were cleared in 1997. Grobbelaar then sued the Sun successfully for libel – only for his winning settlement to be reduced from £85,000 to £1 on appeal. He also had to pay the newspaper’s £500,000 legal costs which left him bankrupt.

 

I am not convinced entirely by Grobbelaar’s account. A conman called Chris Vincent had already cost him millions in a skewed business deal. Yet, because they shared a past in the Rhodesian Army, he met Vincent again. Once Vincent started proposing match-fixing, as a ruse to entrap Grobbelaar, why did he not walk away? “He came to me with a proposal to get my money back. After a while he starts talking about two guys in Hong Kong who will give [me] money to throw a game. I thought: ‘Let’s see where he’s going with this.’ I tried to be Inspector Clouseau. You know how Clouseau gets it wrong? So did I.”

Was he tempted by Vincent’s match-fixing talk? “Absolutely. I was tempted to hear what he was saying, tempted to get him to tell me who the people were. Once I had the names I was going to the authorities. But he got there first.”

 

We’re on safer ground considering Liverpool’s hopeful prospects this season. “Apart from when I’m away, I see every home game,” Grobbelaar says. “If the players are the same as we were then the aim, first and foremost, is the league. Everything else is a bonus.”

 

Grobbelaar was Liverpool’s goalkeeper when they last won the league in 1990. The African Jungleman celebrated by walking the lap of honour on his hands. Could he have believed then that, 28 years later, Liverpool would be waiting for their next title? “No. I blame the witch-doctor who came to Anfield because he’s the one who put stuff on my goal and said: ‘If you don’t have Jungleman, you’re not going to win again.’ They haven’t.”

He laughs when I ask how the witch-doctor’s spell can be broken. “The only way is to urinate on all four posts. I’ve done two but I got caught going down Anfield Road and removed. That’s when Liverpool came second [in 2014]. If we don’t win the title this season I’m going down Anfield Road and doing those two other posts.”

 

Grobbelaar only stops chuckling when he reveals that the president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, called him recently. “He said: ‘Hello, Jungleman, how are you?’ I’m going back in November. As I told him, I would love to be the ambassador to sport, recreation and reconciliation. I still have a lot of hope for Zimbabwe and I would like to make a difference.”

 

Life in a Jungle, by Bruce Grobbelaar, is available from www.guardianbookshop.com

[Johnlj]

I would like to have written alot of shit about alleged match fixing, but I think I'll hold my tongue, and just try to remember that he was a superb goalie on his day, and the exact opposite when he wasn't.

 

[Guest]

https://goo.gl/images/ut6iDa

 

https://goo.gl/images/tLFHyv

[rubble-rouser]

There's a fair bit of bullshit in that article in my opinion. He always comes across as pretty self-obsessed. 

[VladimirIlyich]

32 minutes ago, Johnlj said:

I would like to have written alot of shit about alleged match fixing, but I think I'll hold my tongue, and just try to remember that he was a superb goalie on his day, and the exact opposite when he wasn't.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Johnlj said:

I would like to have written alot of shit about alleged match fixing, but I think I'll hold my tongue, and just try to remember that he was a superb goalie on his day, and the exact opposite when he wasn't.

 

Are you quoting or are these your own thoughts?

I'd like to hear more about the match fixing stuff as I am sort of in the middle on it. The source,the rag,I highly doubt but the fact Grobbelaar lost a lot of money in a business deal gives him a motive to accept money to recover those losses. I really would like to know more,personally.

[Johnlj]

47 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

 

Are you quoting or are these your own thoughts?

I'd like to hear more about the match fixing stuff as I am sort of in the middle on it. The source,the rag,I highly doubt but the fact Grobbelaar lost a lot of money in a business deal gives him a motive to accept money to recover those losses. I really would like to know more,personally.

Just what was out there during the time it all happened. Everyone can draw their own conclussions, but in my oppinion what happened was pretty obvious. Today there would have been a real media frenzy considering the "evidence" available at the time. I can see why it was tempting with his financial situation at the time, but something like that is really hard to prove, but looking at the Newcastle game, noone in their right mind can say that there wasn't something fishy going on. All this allegedly ofcourse. I have no knowledge beyond what everyone else could dig up about the whole thing. Personally my opinion is absolutely, that what happened has no place in football.

[Stickman]

Going the game in the 80's I used to like him and it was quite funny when he came out the area dribbling as we were usually coasting. But now you watch old YouTube stuff back he can count himself extremely lucky he played in such a great side and for so long as if it was 20-30 years later he would never have lasted as every fuck up he made would have been seen and highlighted. He'd have got as much grief as Mingolet

Never forgiven him for costing us two European Cups oh and he was at fault for Lineker's opener in the Cup Final

[Stickman]

1 minute ago, Stickman said:

.

 

[Captain Howdy]

See he’s slagging Klopp off now for his treatment of Karius, absolute cunt of a fella, can’t stand him.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

Talking shite Bruce. 

[Harry Squatter]

He does come across as a bit of a tit. I was in a newsagents/butty shop in town near the LFC studio and he came in with a load of lottery tickets to get them checked. I started talking to him as I was waiting for some food. I completely forgot about the match fixing stuff and said "I'm surprised that you need to do the lottery considering you played for Liverpool".  The fella behind the counter cringed and put his head in his hands then I realised that he was skint because of all his legal bills. 

 

He does have that "look at me" persona though and does like the sound of his own voice. 

[Harry Squatter]

2 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

See he’s slagging Klopp off now for his treatment of Karius, absolute cunt of a fella, can’t stand him.

Says Karius is "exceptional". Yep Bruce, he's exceptionally shit and I trust Klopps judgement over yours.  

[Thoth]

Fucking hate it when pricks do this sort of shit, shut the fuck up Bruce

 

 

Jurgen Klopp should have done more to defend Loris Karius, according to former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar.

Karius was shipped out to Besiktas on a two-season loan in the summer, a promising season with Liverpool having ended in disaster

The German made two high-profile mistakes in the Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid, and was replaced by Roma goalkeeper Alisson shortly after.

Grobbelaar, who won six English First Division titles at Anfield has laid into the manager for “destroying” him.

“Karius is still a very good goalkeeper, a brilliant goalkeeper,” he said.

“The unfortunate thing for him is that he made two mistakes in the biggest game in football after making one mistake in his previous 33 appearances.

“But I don’t think he was nurtured in the right way after what happened in Kiev.

“When he needed people to lean on there was nobody there for him.

“As a former goalkeeper and now as a coach, the first thing that must be done when a keeper makes a howler like Karius did is to go and support him.

“You ask what happened, why, how? I’ve watched replays of Gareth Bale’s second goal over and over and it is clear to me that Loris simply took his eye off the ball.

“It was a basic error. But you don’t destroy a goalkeeper over that. You tell him he’s the best and you work on it every day in training.

“Clearly Jurgen Klopp didn’t do that because Karius is now playing for Besiktas, the fourth-best team in Turkey.”

[Lee909]

Brucie is just wondering if his 'lack of concentration' was anything like his mistakes.

I'm surprised he can show his face around the club to be honest, some dodgy shit with hm whatever really happened

[VladimirIlyich]

Must need the cash for the articles as he's stone wrong in his assessment. Klopp stood by Karius a lot longer than most managers would have done and should have no regrets. The final just emphasised Karius glaring weaknesses as a GK and you cannot be a top class keeper if you fall apart when you make mistakes. Grobbelaar must know this himself as he went through it a few times.

[ZonkoVille77]

Opinions, eh..

[SammyAftershave]

5 hours ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Must need the cash for the articles as he's stone wrong in his assessment. Klopp stood by Karius a lot longer than most managers would have done and should have no regrets. The final just emphasised Karius glaring weaknesses as a GK and you cannot be a top class keeper if you fall apart when you make mistakes. Grobbelaar must know this himself as he went through it a few times.

It wouldn't be the first time. He was doing TV adverts for the Daily Star just a few short weeks after Hillsborough. I personally wrote  a letter of complaint to Peter Robinson. I filed Grobbelaar in the 'fuck off' drawer along with Souness long ago.

 

From Wikpedia:

Hillsborough disaster

On 18 April 1989, three days after the Hillsborough disaster in which 96 Liverpool F.C. fans were fatally injured at an FA Cup semi-final game, the Daily Star ran the front-page headline "Dead Fans Robbed by Drunk Thugs", alleging that Liverpool fans had stolen from fans injured or killed in the tragedy. These allegations, along with claims that fans had also attacked police officers aiding the injured, were published in several other newspapers, though it was the content of a front-page article by The Sun on 19 April which caused the most controversy. A later inquiry showed all of the claims made were false.^[6]

 

[Crazy Dave]

I think he's guilty of match-fixing. Hate saying it because he should otherwise be regarded as a bonafide legend, but the evidence is there in black and white. His explanation of going on some kind of undercover detective mission to expose the "powers that be" is fucking absurd. It's incredible that so many believe Brucie's explanation. 

[razor]

He had a rat's tail in his hair in the 1990s.

 

He wasn't a traveller.

[Harry Squatter]

32 minutes ago, Crazy Dave said:

I think he's guilty of match-fixing. Hate saying it because he should otherwise be regarded as a bonafide legend, but the evidence is there in black and white. His explanation of going on some kind of undercover detective mission to expose the "powers that be" is fucking absurd. It's incredible that so many believe Brucie's explanation. 

It's like dirty Tory MP in Little Britain trying to come up with a excuse to the press about bumming a rent boy in his local park. 

 

 

[aws]

Never thought he went as far as fixing matches.  I reckon he was just selling info to the bookies to give them an edge in fixing odds.