Walsall FC legend Jimmy Walker talks to the Express & Star about the launch of his new book 'Size Is Everything' and memories of playing for the Saddlers. He remembers the great times and also his low moments in his career.
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00:00Back in the day, mental health was never talked about, never a big thing, it was man up, get
00:14on with it. So actually when I got released, yeah, I could have easily walked away, but
00:18it was something inside me that said, no, I need to do it, I need to hang in there.
00:22All right mate, well, good to see you today. Good to see you Dan. Before we go into the
00:28book, if you don't mind, can we just go through sort of a, I suppose, kind of like a bullet
00:34point of your playing career. So do you mind just walking me through that just briefly
00:37so we can have a catch up in terms of your achievements in the sport?
00:40How long you got? I'll keep it brief. Okay, so basically, I mean, the book, obviously
00:46as we're talking about that, I was at Notts County, that's where I started, and obviously
00:52with the title size and everything, I was small for a goalkeeper, as everyone could
00:57obviously witness, and I never got any taller. So basically, I got batted off for any trials
01:02at any clubs at a young age, eventually went to Notts County, last off just before the
01:07academy and went there, got released from there at 19 without playing a first team game,
01:13which was a harsh one, 19 for anyone to take, not a lot of support. It's got a little bit
01:19better nowadays, but back then there was nothing, apart from your family and that really didn't
01:23know the football side of things. So after getting released from Notts, I was sort of
01:27thinking, where do I go from here? I don't think I can take any more rejection. I was
01:34close to contemplating, or very close to contemplating not playing anymore, basically packing it
01:40in and just playing with my mates. Fortunately, Paul Taylor, who was here at the time, and
01:45Kenny Hibbert was manager, they'd seen me play, they rang me and asked if I'd like to
01:50come in for pre-season. I came in for pre-season, after a good long chat with my dad, and my
01:55dad put me on the right path, he didn't put any pressure on me, he just said, look, it's
01:59worth a shot, we'd have to let it go. So anyway, long story short from that, eventually came
02:03in, earned the contract, we got promoted in my second season, Chris Nickle took over as
02:11manager from Kenny, we got promoted, I can't even remember what year that was, it was that
02:17long ago, it was a long time ago, it was probably 95, so we got promoted from Division
02:222, Division 3 as it was then, it's now Division 2 what Walsh was sadly in at the minute, we
02:29got promoted that year, we had two more promotions, got promoted from Division 1 the following
02:36couple of seasons later when Ray Graydon came in, so we got promoted there, went to the
02:41championship, came back down, we got relegated, really unlucky last day of the season, promoted
02:46again via the play-offs, which was one of the best days of all time, I'm sure all the
02:50Walsall fans remember that, Millennium Stadium as well, it was an unbelievable day to achieve
02:57what we did, it made it even sweeter to be there. So that was through the play-offs,
03:03next promotion, and then we stayed in the championship which was as good a promotion,
03:11as big as any achievement I've made was staying in the championship for four years with Walsall,
03:16it was an incredible time, felt we should have kicked on a little bit there, but that's
03:20always in the book as well. Yeah I left Walsall, unfortunately got relegated on the fourth
03:26season in the championship and left then, which left a real sour taste, again as I speak
03:31about in the book, but I ended up going to West Ham, I knew my time had come, I got to
03:3630 years of age then and I had to get to where I wanted to go in the game, it was time to
03:43leave unfortunately, I ended up going to a massive club in West Ham, which was great
03:47to me, still are to this day. On my first season there we got promoted at the championship
03:52play-offs into the Premier League, I unfortunately got injured with literary seconds on the clock,
04:03so as much as it was a fantastic achievement, the richest, I think it's still the richest
04:07prize in English football, it definitely might be world football, getting promoted from the
04:12championship to the Prem, so to do that was an unbelievable achievement and feeling, but
04:18I'd injured my knee and I knew it was a bad one, so obviously I had a year getting fit
04:23from that, but fortunately I got back, battled my way through, there's a lot of times in
04:28the book that I don't think I'm going to get there for various reasons, injuries, the
04:32way I was living etc, it's tough, you ask any footballer when you're injured, it's a
04:39real tough time and I was out for a year and I'm watching the lads play in the Prem, going
04:43back to the sizing and everything, that was what everyone had told me, I was never going
04:48to be tall enough to play in Division 2, never mind the Prem, I wanted to prove everyone
04:51wrong, prove me right more than anything, but I could play in the Prem, seconds from
04:55it happening, it gets cruelly snatched away from me, so it was a tough time, but I battled
04:59back against all the odds yet again, not only was I too small now, I had one knee, I was
05:04still injured, but thankfully I got back, made my Prem debut, which I was delighted
05:10about and that season, a couple of years, West Ham then was obviously the promotion
05:17that season, I got back just in time for the following season, played the Premier League
05:21debut, we got to the FA Cup Final, which was amazing, we had that fantastic Cup Final
05:26against Liverpool, which everyone remembers from Gerrard, and again, that's a massive
05:31part of the book because I thought I should have got the nod, I told Paz, Alan Pardew
05:36was the manager at the time, I told him so many times it was fate, he's at the same place,
05:40a year later, a year to the day of when I'd done my knee in the play-off final, and obviously
05:46Gerrard scored with seconds to spare, the same time, the same goalmouth, the same place,
05:52everything about it was wrote in the stars for me to come and make the save from Gerrard,
05:55listen, it was a fantastic strike, I have no idea if I would have saved it or not, but
06:00the thing that is in the book, the hardest thing, probably haunts me forever more, I'll
06:05never know, I'll never know, if I had that opportunity to be out there, who knows, but
06:11anyway, it's a long read in a book, for now, it was great to be involved in a Cup Final
06:17watching it as a kid, so just to be involved in it was incredible, it could have been even
06:22sweeter, but that's a story for the book, but yeah, after that it was, and we had the
06:30following year at West Ham, it was another fantastic year, we struggled throughout the
06:34season a little bit for various reasons, again which I'll touch on, we looked down and out
06:41with 10 games to go, it looked like the Prem Dream was over, we were going down, it was
06:44a disaster for the club at the time, but we sort of galvanised the squad together at the
06:51point, we got everyone together, it was when Carlos Tevez was there, and Tevez had not
06:55come to the party all season, there was a game in there, which I speak about, at Upton
06:59Park, and he scores a free kick, we end up losing to Spurs, 4-3, it was 3-2 up, we lose
07:06the game 4-3, you've got Mark Noble crying on the pitch, lads are crying, we think we're
07:10done, we think we're finished, we're relegated, 10 games to go, I think 8 or 9 points adrift
07:17or something, and after that Tevez just realised, look round, you could see he had something
07:23switched in him, you could see what it meant to everyone, and after that he was unplayable,
07:26and he pulled us through, and it was some fantastic performances from the rest of the
07:30squad in there as well, it was incredible, so we stayed up on the last day of that season
07:34which in itself was a great achievement, we beat Man United at Old Trafford, Tevez scored
07:39the winner, obviously written in the stars, beat them 1-0 to stay up that season, so that
07:44was great, so coupled with the promotions, the FA Cup nearly glory, it was a great time,
07:51but celebrated staying in the championship with Walsall, and staying in the Premier League
07:56that year with West Ham as success, and we'd achieved something really special, and after
08:02that I was fortunate enough, again it's a long story but I'll cut it really short for now, but
08:07in the book I ended up going to Spurs out of nowhere, I think my prem days were done,
08:12I leave West Ham after a couple more seasons, I had 5 fantastic years there, the 5th season
08:16petered out a little bit, I thought I was going back to Derby to go and play in the
08:20championship, and Harry Redknapp ended up taking me into Spurs on the, just everything conspired
08:26right, and the way that I ended up going there, and it was an unbelievable season, it was like
08:31a bonus, bonus 18 months for me, and we ended up getting the Champions League that season,
08:37end of the season, Crouchy scored ahead at Man City, of course he did, but it wasn't a high one,
08:44it was a little, someone had a shot, the keeper popped it up and he just nodded it in from a couple
08:48of yards, but I mean that season, there's so much Walsall stories and West Ham writing so,
08:54because my two loves, but the season actually at Spurs is a fantastic read from probably a
09:00funnier side of things as well, and just seeing behind the scenes there, so yeah,
09:04so finishing the Champions League, like I said, I got freed from Notts County at
09:0918 years of age, probably everyone's told me I'm too small to make it, the manager at the time,
09:15who was my youth team manager, he told me at the time I was too small to go any further,
09:19that's why he released me, so. I was going to say, sorry, before we do go into the book,
09:25there's one theme that has persisted throughout your career and there was,
09:29from what it sounds like what you're saying, there was a moment in every portion of your career
09:34where you could have said, you know, solve this, I'm going to pack it in, and because you didn't,
09:38something great happened as a result, so it starts with Notts County release to Walsall,
09:42then to West Ham and then get injured, but then coming back and again, Champions League place,
09:46so there was a victory and every time you said I'm not going to quit just yet,
09:49so can you just tell me a bit about, in terms of your own head, sort of where does that element
09:54of you come from, because again, you had, it sounds like you've had an opportunity at each
09:59stage to, you know, say I've sort of tried my best, because you didn't listen to that,
10:06you didn't just persist, you went on a step further each time you did.
10:09There's actually a chapter in the, not a chapter, there's a couple of lines in the book
10:14which probably sums it up to me, I'm going to have to, I'll send it you, because I can't get
10:19it in a mug, but it's basically, you know, it was, I didn't think about it, mentally, you know,
10:26back in the day mental health was never talked about, it was never a big thing, it was man up,
10:31get on with it, so to actually, when I got released, yeah, I could have easily walked away,
10:36but it was something inside me that said no, I need to do it, I need to hang in there,
10:40I need to hang in there, I hung in and like I say, I think I say in the book that, you know,
10:46at times you think you're alone, you think the world's conspiring against you, everything's
10:49going, but if you just stick in there and you hang on and, you know, and you really try and drag
10:55yourself through somehow and just show up at every stage, things do get better, there's always
11:00someone there to help you and when you do start, and when it turns, it just gets, you know, it gets
11:08greater. I guess the sort of evidence of that is in this book, so as we come on to the book, can
11:13you just, I want to talk about sort of what's in there and what you'd say, the sort of the stories
11:18that people are going to be able to sort of really look forward to, but where, where did
11:22sort of the drive to write the book start, when did that first sort of easter egg pop into your
11:25head when you thought, you know, I'm going to go for this and how did it develop? Yeah, well,
11:28I did the first book when I was at Walsall, yeah, and it was just, it was my testimonial, 10 years
11:33at Walsall, an unbelievable time and for my testimonial, Andy Paul, a guy who worked here
11:38at the time, doing the media side of things, great guy, he said, have you thought of doing a book
11:43for your, I'll do it all for your testimonial for you, yeah, so it, I mean, it was an, it was
11:48amazing year and I said, I can't write a book, he said, no, not a problem, you tell me what
11:53and sort of thing, we'll go through it together, sure, and what we did in the end was we'd get
11:58sort of the bigger characters from a certain season or two, that season, you know, like Chris
12:03Marshes, Andy Rammels, Dean Keats, Dan Racks, great guys who, you know, I've played with for so long,
12:11and we'd just get them together on a Tuesday night usually, so it was a bit away from the game,
12:16we'd sit in the hotel up the roads, Andy'd sit there with his dictaphone, get the beers in,
12:21we'd have a couple of beers and Andy, and Steve Preston, God rest his soul, he was not with us,
12:26he was the chairman of my testimonial at the time and he'd get, he was the one that got the
12:30beers in, not me, I'm a tight northerner, he'd get the beers in and he'd go, right,
12:34can you remember when we did, remember that game, first game of that season and that had started
12:39and I'd go, yeah, and someone else would go, yeah, but can you remember that, and then what
12:42happened after that and then that happened and we'd just say, and Andy'd sit there and say,
12:46what can I, can't put in, and I was married at the time, so a lot of it was, nope, nope, nope,
12:51but now I'm divorced twice, I'll put the lot in, anyone, and most, not fortune is the wrong word,
12:58but most of the other lads in the book were all divorced, so they've said, yeah, stick it in as
13:02well, it's fine, but yeah, that's, I mean, so I had a great time writing the first one,
13:06and put lots of foot, and it went so well, the fans loved it and so I always thought,
13:10that's a great idea, but I never really thought anything more of it since then, but obviously
13:14since then we had my time after the testimonial year, you know, leaving Walsall, going to West
13:20Ham and all the Spurs stuff, touch on my coaching career as well at the end of it as well and sat
13:25down and when I left Walsall, I sat with another journalist actually, Nick Machita, and he says,
13:32if you ever thought of joining the dots up between the books, and I went, that's a great
13:36idea actually, and he, and we, so we sort of sat down, he said, you've got all this to do and all
13:42that, so that's where, that's where the idea was born from it really, and I thought, and that was
13:47probably 10 years ago now, and a lot of the times, because I was working as well, and I was at
13:52football, I was, you know, I went into like, so I went into coaching, so it was like, I can't really
13:56bring out, I can't really say all that while I'm at a club, and it was, and a lot of it, I'll be
14:01honest with you as well, was, do I want, do I really want everyone knowing everything? There's
14:08a lot in there that, I'm proud of a lot of things from my career, what I've gone, what I've achieved
14:12is like, you talk about, you know, get released and sort of quitting a lot of times, what I
14:18achieved actually I'm so proud of, just a lot of things I've done I'm very proud of, there's a lot
14:22of things I'm probably not so proud of, I'm definitely, not probably, I'm definitely not
14:27proud of, we've all got them, but so that was my thinking, do I want it all in black and white for
14:32everyone to read, well it's actually colour, but do I want it for everyone to read, and what was the
14:36decision? Well the decision as you can see was, it's all out there, so I joke about it, I say I'm
14:42going to get it all out there, there's no, there's nothing hidden, there's literally everything in
14:46there, it's like the redacted version, I suppose, yeah, not the redacted version, but there's redacted,
14:50there's elements in there that are no longer redacted, and then a continuation of what was,
14:54so I mean, how the book generally goes about is, so I didn't want to just write it down in
15:01chronological order, sort of thing, as generally it's done, just thought it was, I start, so it
15:08basically starts when I was at West Ham, after I'd injured my knee, and I was out for a year, and you
15:13ask any footballer if you're out for a long time, it's your worst time of your life, honestly,
15:17it was such a hard time, and I mean everyone know me as a Jovo character, and you know,
15:23I have a laugh about everything, yeah, but this was a really tough time, you know, I'm that close
15:27to get me, you know, my Prem dreams coming true, the Premiership dreams are coming true,
15:31and it's snatched away from me, with now an injury that's going to possibly end my career,
15:36you know, at best case it's going to take me nine months to recover, but I think most people
15:41have wrote me off that I was never going to get fit again, so it starts after the knee injury,
15:47and it started, funnily enough, it starts in La Manga, of all places, on a club trip to West Ham,
15:53but no one sort of knew to the extent of the spiral I was sort of on at the time,
15:58you know, obviously mental health issues, being out injured, and I always liked to drink anyway,
16:04but I'd hit the drink a lot more, hit the bottle a lot more, and I was spiralling, I knew it,
16:09but couldn't control it, and it was only there people started to realise a little bit, and as
16:14great a time as we had on the club trip, you know, I was good for that, because it was that part
16:18you wanted to take the lads, because we had a real good running coming up for the rest of the season,
16:24he knew I bonded well with the lads, he knew the lads all loved me, I loved the lads,
16:27but he obviously didn't know all my troubles I was having as well, but we had a great trip,
16:32there's lots in there, I won't go through them all in there, because you'll read it,
16:35but the first chapter I read it back, I've just told the guys in there, the synopsis of the first
16:40chapter, there was crying, and even Keira says I'd wonder how long it'd take to get that in,
16:46something like that, but so it goes there, and at the end of it, without giving too much away
16:51of the story, it goes to where I have to basically make another decision, the first
16:58chapter is called finished, so basically that's the gist of it, and that's where it finishes on
17:04the first chapter, then I go back to the start, and the first book, and condense everything back
17:09in from there, have most of the banter stories from the Walsall days all in there, because there's
17:16some great stories in there to look back on, it's been fantastic. Is there a particular one that
17:20would relate to Walsall fans, or exposure, is there anything you'll look forward to this story
17:25in particular? There's quite a few, there's quite a few, I mean the ones we bought before as well,
17:31like I said I couldn't put most things in, I was married, but now the lot's in as well,
17:36so there's some gems there, I mean listen, we had some unbelievable, I'd say the characters
17:43of the players, and the managers stood out for me more than anything, I mean people remember back to
17:49Jan Sorensen here, Chris Nicol as well, God rest his souls, we were both no longer with us anymore,
17:54which is so sad, but just really like writing that back, and going through the days with them,
17:59and you know some of the team talks, and some of the things Chris did, I'm like it, you know
18:05unbelievable for me to read back, so it's going to be great. Was it emotional? The more you're
18:10talking about things, I guess there's things you forgot that you then remember by, you know,
18:14you hear one name and that spurs on something else, were there moments where you sort of had to
18:18you know take a breath, and take a step back? I sort of say in the book, listen, at the end
18:23I hope you've laughed with me, because there's a lot of light stuff in there, but I also hope you
18:27know, you can see how tough it was for me at times, and you might shed a tear for me as well,
18:32I certainly did write in it, 100%, especially as you go on, and people pass away, and they're
18:38no longer with us, and it's so tough, there's a couple of pages of memorials as well,
18:45of people we have lost along the way, loved and lost along the way, so I'd like to honour them
18:49in it as well, and like I say, the Walsall fans have got so much to look forward to as well,
18:53and then you can see the other side of things, of the hard times, and actually what I did when
18:59I left, and then I finally came back, which was a fantastic ending. And so just finally,
19:04where can people buy this book? So this is actually, if you go on to curtis- is the word,
19:10sports, I thought it was a dash, but it's actually a hyphen, curtis-sports.co.uk,
19:18then you can, it's the first book that comes up on at the minute, and it's actually on pre-sale
19:23at the moment, we're going to do pre-sale to I think the 25th of November, and if you actually
19:28buy it on the pre-sale, you can get your name in the book. So I think we've, there's a few
19:33hundred on there already at the minute, which is, the response has been overwhelming for me,
19:36it's been great, like the feedback I've had has been outstanding, it's been great to hear it,
19:40and the amount of people that bought the book to get their name in it, or they bought it to put
19:44their dad's name in it for Christmas and things like that, so yeah, so if you do that in the next
19:48week or two weeks, you can have your name sticker on the back of the book alongside mine as well,
19:53so it's like having a brick outside the shop, we just thought that was a nice touch and,
19:59you know, try and get the pre-sales going and the interest up as well,
20:02so it seems to work really well at the minute, I'm forever grateful.
20:05Awesome, well thank you for your time, I appreciate it.
20:07Yeah, you're more than welcome, I enjoyed it.