£90,000 down in an hour – I knew it had to stop

Footballers get paid very, very well, there is no denying that. And when the money starts rolling in, a player usually goes down a well-worn path that has been taken by generations before him.

House, car, drinking and women are the four standard stop-off points for most young lads making their way in the game, me included.

The fifth stage, however, is one that not everyone reaches. Gambling.

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It is probably the one vice that is still going strong in football. I know this because I have been there.

Don’t get me wrong, gambling didn’t grab me as badly as it has some. For me, it was a social pursuit and something to while away my spare time.

But it did prove to be a costly pastime with my losses down the years probably standing at about £1m.

That may be a figure that shocks some, especially as I wasn’t someone who ever felt addicted to gambling or anything like that. My friends and family will have probably seen me as someone who just enjoyed going to the races, having a few drinks and then watching his horses in action.

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But for a couple of years after joining Blackburn in 2004, I did gamble stupid amounts of money.

Once, I put £100,000 on a horse priced at evens only for it to lose. I was gutted. But, instead of doing what any sensible human being would do and deciding to cut my losses, I put another £100,000 on the evens-priced favourite in the next race to try and get the money back.

Luckily, the bet came in and I ended up level with the bookie. But it was still crazy behaviour.

Before moving to Blackburn in 2004, gambling had never really been an issue in my life.

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Neither the Liverpool lads nor the Leeds lads were into it that much.

The arrival of phone accounts and then text betting changed all that, because placing a bet had suddenly become very, very easy.

Where before you would have had to physically walk into a bookies, now it could be done from the comfort of your own home. So, instead of everyone in the city knowing if you had a big bet on, now no-one had a clue what you were up to.

I put my own decision to open a ‘phone account down to the boredom of my drive to the training ground during my first season at Ewood Park. I was still based in Yorkshire and, no matter how many routes my driver Mick tried, there simply wasn’t a decent route to the training ground.

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So, the journey took forever. I needed something to keep me amused, so I opened that fateful first ‘phone account.

To place a bet, all I had to do was text the words ‘£10g at 9-2, Alfie Flits to win’. Then, when the bookie’s text came back saying, ‘Bet’ that was it. The bet was placed.

It became so easy that I was soon betting £10,000, £20,000, £30,000 on a race. The amount just kept going up until I placed the two £100,000 bets in an attempt to break even.

It was the birth of my first daughter, Luisa, that snapped me out of it. By now, I’d moved into a house in Manchester, and was sitting in the bedroom with the racing on television. My team-mate Garry Flitcroft was at his house in Bolton and we were texting which horses we fancied in the afternoon’s racing. Within an hour or so, we were both £90,000 down.

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We weren’t even at the races, just sitting in the house and yet we’d blown all that money. I thought, ‘This is ridiculous and can’t go on’. So, I wrote a cheque for the amount I owed to the bookie and decided, there and then, that the madness had to stop.

I realised, there and then, that I was gambling with Lu’s future, her inheritance. I want her to have a nice house when she is old enough.

I want her to get a good education and be set up in life. Luisa was the best thing that had happened to my life so I knew the big-time gambling had to stop. And, thankfully, it did.