Troy Deeney admits ‘I loved drinking and didn’t care if it led to a scrap’ in frank discussion of his past
TROY DEENEY does not do half-measures. On and off the pitch, the Watford captain could not pull his punches, even if he wanted to.
The straight-talking striker, 31, has never made any secret of his troubled past, which involved problems with alcohol, gambling, anger management and even a three-month spell in prison for affray.
Now, in a searingly-honest interview, he reveals the story behind an ongoing battle to keep his life on track.
Speaking to talkSPORT’s Sam Matterface, Deeney said: “The hardest thing for anyone is to admit you have a problem and then to act on it.
“I genuinely used to love a drink. I lived for the weekends and if that ended up in a scrap, so be it.
“That was the environment I grew up in. It was normal for me to act that way because everyone did it.
“Now I look back and think, ‘What an idiot’ — but I’d never change my past because it genuinely made me who I am today.
“I am still working on being completely teetotal and the anger issues are a work in progress.
“There’s a lot of deep-rooted stuff in terms of my childhood and not being happy with aspects of my life.
"All of this I’m doing with professional help. Every Monday, from 2pm until 5pm, I sit and talk and try to peel back the layers of the onion that is me.
“Once I’ve worked it all out, I’ll happily tell everyone the key but therapy is not for everyone and anyone who says it’s fun is lying.
“It’s a release and I do feel a lot of pressure and weight coming out. But for the next day I’m very tired, just from the emotional hit I take from offloading everything.”
Dad was involved in a lot of crime and the police were regularly coming to our door looking for him.
Troy Deeney on his difficult childhood
Deeney’s problems stem back to his Birmingham childhood growing up on Europe’s biggest council estate.
His father was in and out of jail while his mother worked three jobs to keep her trio of children fed.
Deeney recalled: “Dad was involved in a lot of crime and the police were regularly coming to our door looking for him.
“From the age of three he always made sure I had a football and he’d make me play with much bigger kids.
“But he’d tell them, ‘Kick him and if he moans he’ll come in’. So I got taught to grow up very quickly.”
Having never expected to become a professional footballer, Deeney admitted his attitude left a lot to be desired when he finally made the grade with Walsall.
He confessed: “I was kicking up a fuss at Walsall because I wanted a move. I was 21 and nobody could tell me anything.
"When the manager, Chris Hutchings, said I couldn’t go I said, ‘You’re going to regret this’ and for the next five weeks I was deliberately disruptive.
“I did all the running but every time the ball came to me I just kicked it away because I remembered a player doing it before when he wanted to leave.
“At Walsall I got away with a lot of things because I was the young star and they wanted to sell me from a business point of view."
'I WAS A RIGHT ****'
Deeney continued: “But at Watford, Malky Mackay and Sean Dyche were very strict in terms of the group mattering more than the individual.
“Malky tried his best to rein me in, putting his neck on the line for me. I massively let him down.
“I was on £5,000 a week, which was enough to buy a house where I was from, and I was still hanging around with all my old mates.
“To be honest, I just turned into a right ****. There’s no other way of saying it.
“Dychey couldn’t stand me when he was Malky’s assistant because I took the mick out of people and didn’t warrant his trust.
“So when he took over as manager in 2011 it was the biggest turning point in my life. That was when I became a man.
“We went to France for pre-season training and Dychey literally tried to break me every day for ten days.
“But I refused to quit on any of the runs we did and even on the few nights out we had, when he was going ‘Troy will get drunk’, I didn’t touch a drop.
“I kept ploughing away and every time he brought a new striker in or tried to sell me, I was going, ‘Doesn’t matter, I’m still going to be here’.”
Deeney’s refusal to give in eventually won Dyche over and earned him a regular place in Watford’s starting line-up.
But his burgeoning career was brought to a shuddering halt in June 2012 when he was sent to prison for attacking a group of students outside a nightclub.
He admitted: “While everything was going well on the pitch, my dad was diagnosed with cancer in February and died in May.
“In the middle of all that I ended up getting into trouble and fighting a legal battle to stay out of jail.”
By the time Deeney was released after serving three months of a seven-month sentence for affray, Dyche had been replaced as Watford manager by Gianfranco Zola.
He said: “I looked like a 1970s bodybuilder on my first day back at Watford. For three months in prison I hadn’t had a haircut and I’d been throwing weights around.
"I went into Gianfranco’s office and he told me I was his seventh-choice striker.
“But I told him to give me one week to prove myself and he turned out to be the manager who got the best out of me.”
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Deeney has hardly looked back since, becoming a cult figure at the Hornets and club captain.
He added: “Physically and mentally, I am now at the point in my life where I’m the best I’ve ever been.
“So I’m just trying to enjoy this time because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to play at the top level.”