Millwall FA Cup hero Robbie Ryan works on London Underground 15 years after last Lions game marking Ronaldo, ‘falling out of love with football’ and a £10k porn channel offer
Former defender will be working overtime at Transport for London's Acton depot when the Lions take on Brighton in the quarter-finals this weekend
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THE clock ticks past 2am at London Underground’s Acton depot and Robbie Ryan is reliving the FA Cup nightmare that still haunts him.
It was the biggest game in Millwall’s history, the 2004 final, and Dennis Wise demanded Ryan rough-up Man United’s talented but fragile teen Cristiano Ronaldo.
“I could have done him in the first three or four minutes,” Ryan, 41, tells SunSport, shaking his head.
“It was on the half-way line, the ball bounced and I could have gone through him and the ball. We’re going back 15 years, so you could have done it. Just let him know you’re there.
“I remember Wisey saying at half-time, ‘Why didn’t you do him?’ I don’t know.
“I still get asked about it now. People say, ‘You marked Ronaldo!’ and I say, ‘Well, sort of… I tried.’”
Ronaldo struck a minute before half-time followed by a Ruud van Nistelrooy double in a comfortable win for the Premier League giants against the second-tier minnows.
Fifteen years on and the former defender is leaning back on a creaky office chair in a side room of the Transport for London base he heads to every weekday night at 11pm.
He will be here on Sunday when his former team-mate Neil Harris aims to send Millwall battering past Brighton and into the FA Cup semi-finals.
It will be the depot instead of The Den for the Irishman. But, surprisingly, he’s not particularly bothered.
For the past 12 years, Ryan has worked here as a TfL cable linesman where his former life is barely known.
From an upsetting exit at Millwall to “falling out of love with football” at Bristol Rovers — and especially the sponsorship offer from an X-rated TV channel — Ryan keeps it all under wraps.
“In the lead up to the FA Cup final, I had Sky Sports at my house, 100s of papers and someone wanted me to put something on the back of my shirt — it was a porno channel,” he says.
“It was something to do with my name. They said they’d pay me £10,000, and we only got a £2,000 bonus for reaching the final. The club said, ‘You can’t do that!’”
The final ended up being his last game for Millwall after the club refused to increase either his wage or length of contract. Ryan rejected a one-year offer “out of principle”.
How he ended up at Bristol that summer was thought to be a myth.
“No, it’s true,” Ryan says. “Their scout’s son was playing the computer game Championship Manager and saw I’d been coming to the end of my contract and didn’t have a club.
“The scout rang the gaffer, Dean Atkins, who I’d played against a few times and I ended up there.
“If that kid didn’t see me, I could have been on the dole. I might have been better off on the dole, to be honest.”
Clashes with Atkins and repetitive injuries saw Ryan leave Rovers after just six months.
He trialled with Northampton Town but it didn’t work out and he needed a job to pay the mortgage.
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“I hated it at Bristol, it hurt me,” Ryan says.
“I thought I’d got it back at Northampton. They said, ‘You must have shagged the gaffer’s missus to have let you go,’ but I made a mistake in a friendly and they said they weren’t looking for a left-back.”
On the drive home, Ryan called a friend who set up an interview with London Underground.
“It’s a good job. It’s hard but there’s a lot of responsibility. You’re dealing with live electricity at 750DC,” he says.
“If you were in charge of a job and wanted to work on the line, I’d go onto the track with cables and discharge the depot. When you’re finished with the job, I go in and recharge the track.
“Most of my work is in the open but I’ve gone 150 metres down into the deep tunnels.
“I’ve seen a f***ing fox literally chopped in half on the railways, I’ve seen a rat with it’s head hanging off. I took a photo to show my missus and kid.”
Working nights means Ryan gets to spend time with his wife and 13-year-old daughter who he drives to school and diving lessons.
“I don’t get a lot of sleep, about four or five hours a day. I feel grand until the weekend comes,” Ryan says.
For 14 years, his Saturdays and Sundays were spent travelling the country for football. These days, he can barely even watch it.
“It hurts me now,” Ryan says. “I’m a Liverpool fan and I didn’t even watch the Man United game the other day. I watched the first-half and went out with my wife for the second.
“It’s because I used to love it and now I don’t. It was like a marriage breaking down. I thought I’d love football forever.
“It was my life, I left my mother and father at 17 for football and I wouldn’t have left them for a lady — only f***ing football.
“I go to Millwall once a year, and when I go I enjoy it. I have a drink and the fans are nice to me. I went to Millwall-Everton and had a few drinks before and after, but the game itself…”
He trails off with a despondent shrug.
Ryan will, of course, be rooting for the Lions this weekend and hopes to send Harris a message of congratulations.
They are part of a WhatsApp group along with former team-mates including Sean Dyche, Tony Warner, Joe Dolan and David Livermore.
“I went to the Everton game and the boys text to say well done. I was in the pub so took a video and sent it on the WhatsApp group,” Ryan says.
But this time, he’ll be at the depot.
And with Ronaldo the one now creaking towards retirement, could Ryan’s TfL team do with a fresh pair of hands?
“Sure,” Ryan says, preparing for a job in South Kensington, “Cristiano can come and hold some cables for us.”