Clint Hill Interview From Today's Times

Clint Hill article in the Times:

Clint Hill, most likely, would find the concept of writing an autobiography faintly laughable. Such is his modesty, the Queens Park Rangers captain would doubtless scoff at the very idea that anyone would wish to spend their hard-earned money on his thoughts, his views. It is a shame: Hill’s unorthodox, inverted career would make a fascinating story, and you get the impression that he would tell it rather well. What would that book be called? Easy. Clint Hill: To Put It Bluntly.

That is the 34-year-old’s default setting: articulate, engaging, and compulsively frank. Hill does not do sugar-coating. “To put it bluntly” is the first phrase he utters as he relaxes on a newly installed cream leather sofa at QPR’s Harlington training ground, and it recurs throughout the conversation. Hill is blunt about everything. He is blunt about his team-mates and his club, about what has gone wrong this year and last. He is blunt about why it is that QPR travel to Reading for tomorrow’s derby of the dead men with their relegation all but confirmed. He is blunt about what the club must do to learn from this experience. In the tongue-tied world of the Barclays Premier League, infested with euphemism and addled with doublespeak, his honesty is wholly refreshing. Most of all, though, he is blunt about himself. “I’m not the most gifted player,” he says. “I know I’m not going to run around nutmegging people or outsprinting them. I suppose I could try, but I’d only end up embarrassing myself. I know my limits. So I concentrate on the bits I can do and try not to do the bits I can’t.” That perspective probably comes from his unusual career path.

It would be harsh to suggest that Hill had been written off as a lower-league journeyman, but it’s probably fair to say that the game had cast him as a second-tier stalwart. He spent 13 years at Tranmere Rovers, Oldham Athletic, Stoke City and Crystal Palace, a reliable, unspectacular presence in the npower Championship and League One. Then, at 33, when he thought that his chance had gone, came the reward: a Championship title with Neil Warnock’s QPR and a crack at the big time. “I never thought I would play in the Premier League, so for a player of my ability to have played 50-odd games at the age of 33 and 34 is something I will look back on with great pride,” he says. “I’ve played against some of the best strikers in the world. I’ve done well against some of them, and not so well against others. But, given that I spent most of my career at the wrong end of the Championship, I did not expect this to happen, especially at this age. It was more of a shock to be here than anything else.” Even then, sailing has hardly been smooth. “I’ve been sent out on loan, and I’ve been shown the door a few times, told I can go by various people,” he says. “But I suppose I’ve hung around like a bad smell, and I have kept on getting a chance.” He grasped it: he was voted Player of the Year by the club’s fans and his team-mates last season, and awarded the captaincy by Harry Redknapp this. “It’s been up, down, up, down, yeah,” he says. “I’m proud in that I’ve stepped back into the light after being told I can go, and I’ve kept some big players out of the team. I’ll look at that in a couple of years and think: ‘Fair play to you.’ ”

The problem, of course, is that, after that long wait, after all the trials and tribulations, it has not gone quite as he would have hoped. “It has not been enjoyable, no, to be blunt about it,” he smiles, wearily. “We have lost a lot of games, and I’m not the sort of player who can enjoy football if I’m getting beaten every week. It’s been quite embarrassing at times. I’ve not really enjoyed a minute of it, to be honest. “I’m realistic. I know that after the next four games I might not play in the Premier League again. I want to try and enjoy it, but that’s hard. I’ll enjoy it a lot more if we can win those games, if we can put a bit of pride back in the club.” This is another leitmotiv of spending time in Hill’s company. Whatever he believes he lacks in finesse, he more than makes up for in professional dedication. He speaks of pride being the only motivating factor any of his team-mates should need for their remaining games in the top flight, and he confesses that perhaps a lack of it may explain why QPR find themselves staring into the abyss. “We can’t argue with that,” he says, when asked if the assertion that too few of Redknapp’s squad have shown the requisite fighting spirit is fair. “Results sum that up. They have not been there. I’ve always been very self-driven, the proverbial 110 per cent player. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I can always look myself in the mirror. You would have to ask different people among my team if they can do that.”

Here, a delicate note of diplomacy enters Hill’s faded Liverpudlian accent. The allegation, of course, is that most of QPR’s squad are mercenaries, attracted by Tony Fernandes’s wallet, rather than by love for the club. “I suppose,” says Hill, choosing his words carefully, “you have to ask if we got the right blend in the squad. “Maybe the club tried to jump seven or eight places at once. Personally, I feel not enough faith was shown in the players who brought us up. That is what Norwich, Swansea and Southampton did: they stayed true to their players. But then you can’t blame the chairman for having a go, can you? I feel very, very sad for him. He has done everything he can.” The same, of course, could be said for Hill. He knows no other way, after all, to put it bluntly.

 

I expect him to bring a book out revealing all then.