I think limited ability relative to other more talented players is a fair assessment. He's way better than lower league players and well short of top class players. He's never come across as feeling superior. The fact that he was rejected early on in his career and having suffered a long term injury made an impression on his attitude. He's never taken anything for granted and fully appreciated the privileges that football has brought him. He's been loyal to our club which should be fully applauded by us fans.
His left peg is very limited, average you might say.
Anyone else think Brunt will go in January?
His left peg formerly referred to as a wand hasn't performed much magic in recent times. He's been a very good club player and shown laudable professionalism sometimes in the face of vitriol from some who claim to support us. However he's never been a great player in the same sentence as Ronaldo, Messi, Pele and so forth
The gate opens and talking toothless orifices can be heard. Some of you need to give your mouth a chance ffs.
(09-09-2019, 09:43 AM)Noibla Wrote: [ -> ] (09-09-2019, 09:12 AM)Super_Slav Wrote: [ -> ] (09-09-2019, 08:51 AM)B36baggie Wrote: [ -> ]Can anyone copy the 2nd part onto here?
Yes mate. I will do for you.
Following on from the first instalment of our two-part interview in which Brunt reflected on his many managers, the veteran midfielder now talks us through a career that has seen rejection, promotion and sharing a hotel room with Darren Fletcher…
Chris Brunt is realistic enough to know he is in the autumn of his career.
If this 17th season is to be the last in the career of the current West Brom club captain, it will mark the end of a remarkable journey that almost ended before it began.
Had Brunt’s father Colin not talked him around as a homesick teenager on Teesside pining for the familiar comforts of Belfast, Albion fans may have been denied one of the most momentous careers of the club’s Premier League era — and Brunt might have missed out on a hell of an adventure.
There were many potential diversions on the road from Newtownbreda in the southern suburbs of Belfast to legendary status in the West Midlands, including overtures from Alex Ferguson, a shock rejection by Rangers and getting released by Middlesbrough.
Aged 16, Brunt moved from his family home to the north east of England just a few weeks after completing his GCSEs.
“I moved with another lad from Belfast and by the end of pre-season, he’d got a pretty bad ankle injury and gone home, ” recalls the Baggies’ skipper during a two-hour chat with The Athletic.
“My mum and dad actually went and registered me back into school (in Belfast) to do my A-levels because I was so homesick. But my dad flew over to see me. I think he phoned in sick for a couple of days to fly over and talk me round. My girlfriend, who is now my wife, was still at home and that made it a lot harder.”
Brunt’s better half, Cathy, has been part of his life for almost as long as he can remember. He met her as a schoolboy growing up in a city still dealing with its troubled past.
“I’ve known her and her family from when we were 10,” says Brunt. “We went to the same school. She ended up coming over to university in Middlesbrough, then I got released and moved to Sheffield and she just transferred her course. I’ve pretty much been dragging her around the country ever since.”
When Brunt was seven, a huge IRA bomb destroyed a forensic science laboratory and damaged around 1,000 houses just around the corner from his family home. But he remembers being shielded from the harsh realities of politics and violence, with football dominating his childhood.
“Politics doesn’t really interest me now and it definitely didn’t interest me then,” he says. “I was pretty oblivious to it and it didn’t make a big difference to me because the area I grew up in was pretty mixed. Protestants and Catholics were pretty integrated and I was brought up believing nobody was any different. You treated people how you found them, which is obviously the way it should be.
“A lot of people from Belfast, generation after generation, have seen far worse stuff than I have. It’s something you need to try to get away from but you can see why people can’t let things go after stuff that’s happened in the past. I was very lucky and we were kept away from it.
“The football team I played for when I was a kid was based in West Belfast near the Shankill Road. The team was based in a Protestant area but we had players from all over Northern Ireland — Protestant and Catholics. We were just a good football team.
“It makes me sound old but I’ve got two kids now, aged 11 and eight, and they’ve got so many other things to keep them entertained. Back then, you just went out on your bike. You got on your bike at 10 o’clock in the morning and you didn’t go home until six o’clock at night — when you were told to.”
Football appeared to be the young Brunt’s most likely career path from the moment he was spotted at a soccer school and invited to join St Andrew’s, one of Belfast’s most successful boys’ clubs.
An established link between St Andrew’s and Scottish giants Rangers saw Brunt and Steven Davis, a childhood friend who would go on to be a Northern Ireland team-mate, travel to Glasgow frequently to pursue their dream careers.
Brunt even rejected the advice of Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of his boyhood heroes Manchester United, so keen was he to make it at Ibrox. And things appeared set to work out until, at the last, the rug was pulled from beneath the pair of hopefuls.
“The boys’ club had a good connection with Rangers and the two of us went over there until we were 16 in school holidays or at weekends and in the end, they ended up taking neither of us,” says Brunt. “It looked like they were going to take us both, then Dick Advocaat came in and brought a lot of Dutch players and things changed.
“For a lot of lads from Belfast, Rangers or Celtic would have been the dream. I was a Protestant growing up in Belfast, so we did support Rangers — it was a generalised thing — but my parents never pushed it on me.
“When we went over [to Glasgow], the club used to take us to the games. They had a good team at the time with Brian Laudrup, Paul Gascoigne and Ally McCois. They were class. I always look out for their results but I would never say I was a die-hard Rangers fan.
“I went to Manchester United a couple of times when I was 10 or 11. I loved United and my dad and my brother did, too – definitely a lot more than Rangers. I actually ended up staying in a hotel room with Darren Fletcher for a week when we were kids.
“But I never enjoyed United as much as I did Rangers, even though the set-up was a lot better back then.
“Alex Ferguson was the manager at the time and I got to meet him a couple of times. They told him I was going to Rangers and I remember him quite often saying I should stay at United but I just never got the same feeling there, so I ended up going back to Rangers for a few years, which didn’t really work because they binned me anyway!”
Middlesbrough stepped in to offer Brunt a trial, which resulted in a contract after just three days on Teesside.
Having overcome that initial homesickness, more disappointment was to come when, after a positive start to his three-year apprenticeship, a knee injury wrecked year two and he was told in year three that he would not be kept on.
James Morrison, a future Baggies team-mate who was in the year below Brunt at Middlesbrough, and Stewart Downing, a future England international from the year above, got professional deals instead.
Brunt was left hunting for employment, and an enjoyable week at Darlington and frustrating few days at Cardiff were followed by a trip to Sheffield Wednesday for a trial organised by Mark Proctor, Boro’s under-18s manager.
He smiles as he recalls his first day at Hillsborough.
“I went on the Monday and didn’t know who I was supposed to be training with, so I went out with the first team,” he says. “I think I was supposed to be with the youth team but I said, ‘I’ve been sent from Middlesbrough for the week’ and the first team said, ‘OK, just join in!’.
“They took my contract over for the rest of the season and I did alright, played a few games and got into the first team, and we stayed up by the skin of our teeth. I scored a free-kick on my debut [against Brighton] and scored another when we got battered by Blackpool.
“I loved it. I was walking out at Hillsborough with 25,000 people watching us in Division Two [now League One].
“But the club was in turmoil and had a big clear-out in the summer. They brought in a lot of young lads like me, Glenn Whelan and Steven MacLean. I loved my three years there. We were all young lads in the same boat, all wanting to do well and progress our careers.
“I moved down with Cathy and got a flat – we all lived pretty close to the training ground and all got on really well. We’re all still in touch now and the girls are still in touch too.”
Eventually, though, Wednesday’s financial issues led to the break-up of the team and Brunt found himself subject to a successful bid from Tony Mowbray, the ambitious young West Brom boss.
“I just knew it was near Birmingham!” he admits with a chuckle. “But I remember coming to The Hawthorns the previous year and thinking, ‘They’ve got a good squad.’
“West Brom were offering me better money than Sheffield Wednesday and whatever anybody tells you, that makes a big difference, especially at that stage of your career.
“And I knew West Brom were going to be one of the favourites to go up and Sheffield Wednesday weren’t.”
Brunt’s instincts proved correct and, after playing his part in one of the most thrilling seasons in recent Baggies history, he scored the goal against Southampton that would effectively seal promotion to the Premier League.
It was the start of a momentous week.
“That’s something that will stay with me for the rest of my days,” he says. “That goal picture is always cropping up. I’ve struck better ones but it went in and that’s all that matters.
“Then I scored again on the Sunday at QPR to win the league and my eldest son, Charlie, was born in between the two games, so it was a pretty good week!”
The rest of Brunt’s Baggies career has become the tale of a modern-day great.
He has pulled on an Albion shirt 412 times, scored 48 goals, won two promotions, suffered two relegations, played in an FA Cup semi-final and helped Albion to eight successive seasons in the Premier League, peaking with 11th, 10th and eighth-place finishes in successive seasons.
Internationally, he became one of Northern Ireland’s most popular players but missed out on a place at Euro 2016 through a cruciate ligament injury. It is the biggest regret of his career.
“Not being able to play in the Euros was a massive disappointment,” he admits. “You spend so much of your life away from home playing for your country, so not being able to go and play in the tournament was gutting.
“But what can you do? I’ve been really lucky with injuries in my career and I was just unlucky on that occasion.
“Then to lose out in the following year in the World Cup play-off to a horrendous refereeing decision (Ricardo Rodriguez’s controversial penalty) didn’t make it any easier.
“Highlights? Getting promoted under Tony Mowbray in that first season was great and scoring a goal was something I will never forget.
“And then it was just great being part of a decent Premier League team.
“Growing up, you always want to be in the Premier League, testing yourself against the best players you can, and I have been fortunate enough to do that for quite a lot of my career here.
“Looking back, I wish I had taken more of it in, especially at West Brom, because when you’re in it, every day rolls into one.”
Brunt knows this season could be his last at The Hawthorns.
He is into the final year of his contract and is currently out of the team, although he is clearly still impressed with new boss Slaven Bilic.
He has not ruled out extending his career elsewhere but would need to weigh up any offers before agreeing to commute from the Midlands, where he has based his family and where he plans to remain when his career ends.
The 34-year-old is in a reflective mood, adamant that occasional criticism from supporters and an infamous 2016 incident when he was struck by a coin thrown by a travelling fan at Reading will not define his relationship with a fanbase which has, by and large, taken him to its heart.
“I love the club,” he says. “It’s a great club with great people working for it. The majority of the time the fans have been great.
“The Reading thing was one idiot in the crowd who’d had a few too many. You’d rather it didn’t happen but you’ve got a lot of people coming to watch you and it’s an opinionated game — that’s what makes it so great.
“Someone might say I’m the worst player in the world and for someone sitting two rows in front of them, I might be their favourite player.
“I’d like to think, over my time here, I’ve been reasonably consistent and if the fans are happy with that, that’s good enough for me.
“The football club as a whole is great with the foundation and the stuff in the community and the longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve got involved.
“People ask you to come back and you become a well-known name, and you can use that to help out.
“That gives you as much pleasure as anything else because football moves on quickly and this club is very good with its former players.
“They’ve got a good former players’ association and you see them around all the time.
“If, in a few years time, I’m still involved at the club, coming to games or meeting or greeting people, I’ll be happy.
“One of the good things about being here so long is that you can relate to people.
“You know a lot about the football club and you know people around it.
“Fanbase wise, it’s not the biggest club in the area so it does have more of a family feel to it.
“So in the future, hopefully I’ll be able to come back with my kids and my wife but hopefully, I’ve got a few games left in me this season and can help out on the pitch before thinking about anything like that.”
Thanks for this, we will miss him when he does decide to pack it in and i don't think we will see so much commitment from a player to WBA in a very long time, one of the Albion greats
ALBION LEDGEND M8
(09-10-2019, 07:26 AM)DAVE Wrote: [ -> ]ALBION LEDGEND M8
Always liked Brunteh, always seemed honest and down to Earth. Interesting also, that he married his school sweetheart, that must be rare with modern footballers?
He is a true professional and WBA are lucky to have him .......I hope sad baggymad is reading this and is squirming at his previous posts
(09-10-2019, 11:35 AM)The liquidator Wrote: [ -> ]He is a true professional and WBA are lucky to have him .......I hope sad baggymad is reading this and is squirming at his previous posts
From the article it sounds like he may well stay on in some capacity... Sounds like he'd make a good coach.
Cracking article, will be involved at the club moving forward I’m sure
Not many like him left in the modern game
Cuzer