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The 42
02-06-2025
- Sport
- The 42
'People saw a gentle giant. They had no idea behind closed doors what that Jekyll and Hyde was capable of doing'
IT'S AMID THE thrust and roil of Ireland's Euro 2016 qualifier against Scotland in Celtic Park, and David Forde has just pushed up against the wall of noise with a sigh of relief. Having inexplicably rolled the ball directly to Steven Naismith, the Scottish forward mercifully pulled his snapshot wide of the post. Forde then glances to the Irish bench and sees Roy Keane sprung to attention: roaring, arms waving. What the fuck do ya think you're doing!? Forde isn't one for flight over fight. Do ya think I meant it, you silly p***k? Fuck off! Nor is Keane. Sort yourself out, who do you think you're talking to?! Forde finds himself in the crosshairs of Keane's icy stare during the half-time break and again after a defeat that looks to have dealt a concussive blow to Ireland's qualification hopes, condemned by Shaun Maloney's curling shot from Scotland's short corner routine. Forde can't stop Maloney's winning goal curling into the corner of the net. James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO The following morning, Martin O'Neill assembles the squad for some rare video analysis. As they review the Scottish goal, a hand is raised. 'Take it back to the free kick that gives away the corner,' says Shay Given, who has found himself on the bench at Forde's expense. The footage shows the moment the corner was conceded: Jon Walters backtracks in his own penalty area to head an inswinging cross over his own crossbar. 'I think Fordey could have come for the cross,' says Given. The footage then rolls to the goal and Given's audio commentary continues. 'Fordey, why did you let Aiden McGeady leave the back post? He should have stayed there 'till the ball was cleared.' Forde tightens up and concentrates on his breathing until the moment safely passes. 'If that had happened earlier in my career', Forde tells the 42, 'I would have burned through that room.' ********** David Forde (file photo.) Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO Forde has written his autobiography, Being the One, in which the reader is strapped into the rollercoaster of a career at the sharper end of football. But ultimately there is one result that matters. 'The biggest win I had in my whole career', says Forde, was the 'win within.' Forde's early career was defined by frightening fits of wild rage. Playing with Barry Town in Wales, he was sent off for punching a team-mate during a game. He leaped on his room mate Jason Byrne when on a pre-season trip with Cardiff City after some silly, ice-tossing provocation. After a frustrating 2-2 draw against Peterborough, he jumped across the changing room to try and grab his Millwall manager Kenny Jackett by the throat, only to be intercepted by a couple of coaching staff in time. Advertisement Forde says he knows the meaning of the phrase blind rage. Some of these incidents are described in his book as akin to a blackout, as Forde asks team mates to recount and piece together his own actions. 'Outside people saw David Forde, a 6 ft 4, gentle giant', says Forde. They had no idea behind closed doors what that Jekyll and Hyde was capable of doing.' In his own words, Forde didn't just burn bridges. 'I packed the fuckers with dynamite and blew them to bits.' The emotional depths to which he sinks in the aftermath are vividly rendered in the book. After the set-to with Byrne, Forde sits up all night, asking whether he can trust himself. After trying to attack his own manager, he stood in the shower for 45 minutes to make sure everyone had left the dressing room before he emerged. But by the time he was a senior Irish international, he had learned to better regulate his emotions. He hasn't learned to control them because, he says, emotions are too powerful to control. Better instead to regulate their more negative effects, as he managed to do say when the Glasgow game became a tapestry of provocations. Ireland nonetheless qualified for Euro 2016. Given was included in the squad, but Forde was not, as he was among the wider squad players cut from the final selection after a friendly against Belarus at Turner's Cross. Forde hung back after learning of the news, signing autographs outside the ground as an Irish international, knowing inside that international career was over. Forde says he stayed back out of respect for supporters, but that he did so at his lowest moment was the sign that the full-time whistle had been blown on his inner game. Realising he had to get a handle on his anger, Forde studied psychology, read philosophy, practised meditation techniques and probed inward. 'We all have a shadow and we all have a light,' says Forde. 'The biggest problem is everybody wants to be seen in their light. Nobody wants to see their shadow.' He learned some emotional literacy, the starting point was realising that anger and rage are emotions, too. 'Anger is just an expression, it's a venting,' says Forde. 'It's someone just trying to say that they're either lonely or isolated or feeling separation, and it's a language we don't actually understand.' Forde then dug into what he was trying to articulate with his anger, eventually alighting on the power of shame. He dedicates a chapter of his book to his earliest encounter with shame, when his sister falls pregnant and breaks the habit of her lifetime by refusing to go to the shop for their grandmother, for fear of the whispers of the chattering neighbours. 'Shame is basically just the fear of judgment,' says Forde, who would go on to work in a sport in which careers are entirely the product of judgement. 'We're all a product of our circumstances and our environment,' he says, 'and then I find myself in football and what is football based off? Managers, coaches, peers, players, fans, press, media, television: everybody making judgments. 'My journey was to actually understand what I was actually dealing with, and what I was trying to break free from.' In the book, Forde delves into his relationship with his late father, who did not provide him with direct and positive judgements. Forde writes he was 'emotionally neglected', missing his father's approval. 'My father was my hero. He left me lonely,' writes Forde. While Forde's father didn't tell him directly of his pride, he could tell others of that pride in the local pub. Forde remembers getting slaps on the back from men around home, exclaiming, 'Jaysus, your father was delighted with ya!' 'During my career, yeah, if I do something great and I do something successful, that pat on the back might actually come,' says Forde. 'He probably did me a favour by not doing it! I'm only joking. It definitely played its part, in terms of, if I do well in my sport, I'll impress him.' Seeking the approval of surrogates in the realm of football was thus always going to be a thwarted exercise, and so certain criticisms were perceived as rejections, and were loaded with more meaning for Forde than was ever intended. Forde's inner game was to realise all of this. 'When I started to see that, I started to realise that my Dad was an amazing man,' says Forde. 'He did the best with what he had.' He recounts his final meeting with his father, as he lay in a hospital bed on St Enda's ward in Galway hospital. 'I said, 'Look Dad, when the light comes and the ancestors come, don't be afraid. You go. I want to thank you for everything you have done for me. You did your best.' He couldn't talk to me at the time, so he gave me a thumbs up. 'That moment allowed me [to have] no regret or remorse because I got to say what I had to say to my Dad. That's why I did this book, and why I began to change and transform. I didn't want to pass that down to my children. I can't protect them from everything, but I can give them a better start by communicating and being more open and transparent. 'I never heard my father say he was proud of me, but I am proud of him.' ********** Forde in action for West Ham in a pre-season friendly against Dagenham in 2003. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo In his book, Forde remembers a 2003 FA Cup tie with West Ham away to Manchester United. Forde was an unused substitute in a brutal 6-0 defeat, after which Gary Breen, who started at centre-half, stood up in the dressing room and said, 'I've no right to be in this team. I don't think I'm good enough to play at this level.' Breen had played and scored at a World Cup seven months earlier. Forde includes the moment as it was a rare moment of open vulnerability in a dressing room. 'It was true bravery in front of your peers,' writes Forde, as Breen 'held no shame that day.' This is not the typical stuff of dressing rooms, where each individual player is taught to believe they are a lion tamer, and the moment they show even the hint of weakness, they'll be eaten. This is a long-established environment, but not an especially healthy one. We turn back to the scene of Keane berating Forde from the sideline at Celtic Park. Forde made a mistake. Mistakes happen, and he didn't set out to make it. But in that moment, Forde perceived Keane's reaction not as a confrontational challenge not to repeat that mistake, but as a threat to his whole identity. It's an insight into the personal insecurity on which so much football is built. Forde had fought his whole career to play for Ireland, and now he feared it could be taken away. He saw threats everywhere. He was playing instead of Shay Given, but Given had recently started working with Keane at Aston Villa. Given is arguably Ireland's greatest goalkeeper, where Forde is 'only' playing at Millwall. Keane's maybe our greatest-ever player. Forde was named to start and did so, but before the game, the goalkeeper coach had taken the unusual step of warming up one of the reserve goalkeepers rather than the number one, as was custom. 'What does somebody do when their ego gets challenged, and their sense of identity?They go into fight mode,' says Forde. 'I didn't see it as a challenge. I saw that fundamentally as a threat. 'I am battling for my position, for my family, for a roof over my head, and I felt it being pulled away from me, brick-by-brick. It was a build-up, it was happening over time. 'I never felt that security. Maybe that was their style and fundamentally their style was not my style.' Forde also says his own ego prevented him from seeing it from Keane's side: he was under pressure to win, even moreso at Celtic Park as a former Celtic player and assistant to a former Celtic manager. Forde works as a performance coach now, and his clients include young footballers. He also spent some time on Stephen Kenny's staff with Ireland for emotional support. He says the modern game is changing now. After a 20-year revolution in physical preparation – led by the likes of Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson – he says the next 20 years will see a revolution in the mental side of the game. 'We are stepping into the next 20 years of the mind, and of understanding how the mind affects players and how they are affected by how coaches and managers and players are communicating, how they like to be motivated. 'I grew up in that generation that was motivated by fear. Now I look at my own children and the generation that's coming, they do not tolerate that. The generation now want to be inspired and motivated, that's what gives them momentum. They don't appreciate people who come to them with that aggressive approach. 'Going from being passive-aggressive to passive-assertive: that's really what a man is. Someone who will assertive themselves. There are many way to show bravery and courage on a football pitch. 'It's not about breaking legs and being a fucking tough man. They are the men who are afraid. It's those who can impose themselves on a game. Go and win a header, win a tackle, dive at someone's feet. It takes courage too to stand up and not tackle. It is all perception, and the perception of how the game is being played is being transformed.' Forde admits that writing a book was opening up to further judgement, but he has more than learned to deal with it. 'I'm secure physically. I'm secure mentally. I'm secure emotionally. I'm secure intellectually. What I believe about myself is true now. And what others think about me, is none of my business. That's called freedom.' Being the One by David Forde is published by Pathfinder Books and is available now For updates on book signing events, follow David Forde
The Herald Scotland
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Tennent's Lager steadies ship after turbulent period
Those episodes led to C&C parting company with two chief executives, David Forde and Patrick McMahon, and chairman Ralph Findlay – the Scottish pub and brewing veteran who ran Marston's for many years – stepping in from the chairman's role to steady the ship. And there is no doubt life has settled down at C&C since shareholder confidence was rocked by the internal strife. Results announced to the City today revealed a resurgent performance by the Dublin-based drinks company, which saw operating profits surge by 17.1% to €77.1 million in the year to February 28. Read more: It was certainly a more benign update for chief executive Roger White to deliver to the market, after the first he presented shortly after joining the business in March containing a profit warning. Speaking to The Herald today, Mr White certainly did not give the impression that C&C was the finished article. But he expressed confidence that the worst of the problems at Matthew Clark Bibendum were over, with the wholesaling arm continuing to win customers and striving to recover the loss of confidence in the business. Yet there are big external challenges to navigate. While C&C may be able to master the internal errors that have hampered it over the last two years, the trading environment continues to be turbulent. As Mr White, a former long-standing boss of AG Barr observed, the hospitality businesses that C&C supplies are dealing with problematic costs just as consumers in many cases are struggling to 'make ends meet'. It was therefore, arguably the most optimistic assessment that Mr White could deliver when he said the firm was cautiously optimistic about the outlook. C&C did not alter its guidance for the current year today, and stuck by its expectation that profits will rise only 'marginally' on last year.
