Source: Daily_Mail
MATT LAWTON: He's battling the rage but Barton could explode again
One night locked inside that prison cell in Manchester was enough. One night with a man with no teeth called Chopper. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Joey Barton told himself he was never coming back. [LNB]He had 73 nights to go in what the cons still call Strangeways but he made a promise. No more drinking. No more fighting. No more pain for those closest to him to endure. [LNB]No more giving people reasons to rank him, in his words, alongside 'the anti-Christ, Chairman Mao and Hitler'. [LNB] In the firing line: Barton tries to puthis troubles behind him at a charityfishing and shooting event near Stafford this week[LNB]It is a promise, he admits with chilling sincerity, that he could yet struggle to keep. He cannot promise he will not commit violent crime again. He cannot be certain that the changes he has made to his life, even the horrors of prison, will enable him to conquer his demons. [LNB]But he hopes they do. He really does hope they do. [LNB] 'What they say about being in prison is true,' he says. [LNB]'That moment when the door closes, time stands still. And for me 74 days felt like two years.[LNB]'There's not a man in there who's not scared. There's not a man in there who doesn't regret it. You're in there. You're on your own. Everyone is at their lowest ebb. Prison is a great leveller. There's no bull. It's not about what kind of car you've got because you've got nothing. It strips you of everything. I went from footballer wages at Newcastle to £7.50 a week. When we watched the Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea, we were betting Mars bars. [LNB]'I had to have some kind of mental resilience to handle that. I went from being a rich man to having nothing. Everything is taken away, everything. The pillow in your bed isn't the same. You can't just run yourself a bath. [LNB]Opening up: Barton fears he might explode yet again[LNB]'You don't sleep when you're in there. Especially when the geezer in the bunk below is a caveman, a chain smoker with no teeth, by the name of Chopper. That was his name, I swear, it was surreal. [LNB]'But it made me get my priorities right. You could have told me until you were blue in the face that I was on a road to destruction and the penny would not have dropped. Until, that is, I went to jail. I never thought I'd be there. I thought, "I'm too high profile, I've only had a fight, I haven't killed anyone". And then I remember sitting there, thinking "******* hell, I'm in jail.' [LNB]The jury thought it was more than simply a fight and so do the majority of those who have seen the shocking CCTV footage of him unleashing 19 punches on a man in Liverpool's city centre. [LNB]Listening to Barton, there is no doubting his desire to become a better person. But you've got to remember that he has been trying since he stubbed out a smouldering cigar in the eye of a team-mate at Manchester City's Christmas party and then got in a fight with a 15-year-old Everton fan during a club tour of Thailand. [LNB]He has been trying since Stuart Pearce, then the manager at City, fined him £120,000 for assaulting the youngster before sending him to the Sporting Chance Clinic for much-needed anger management therapy. [LNB]It was there, at the charity that was founded by Tony Adams for sports stars with destructive behaviour problems, that he met Peter Kay, the man who runs the clinic and who has become his mentor and friend. Barton turned to Kay when he ended up in a Liverpool police cell on December 27, 2007, for the assault that took place outside a McDonald's restaurant at 5.30am. [LNB]He called him when a fight with Ousmane Dabo at Manchester City's training ground eight months earlier had left him facing yet more criminal charges. He even called him towards the end of last season in the wake of that now infamous dressing room bust-up with Alan Shearer and Iain Dowie after his red card at Liverpool. Incidents which illustrate how hard he still finds it to control that temper. [LNB] On the ball: Sidelined Barton wants to let his football do the talking upon his return[LNB]He calls Kay regularly and this week he joined him in supporting the annual fishing and shooting day for the Tamsin Gulvin Trust. It is a charity, for which Barton is a patron, that supports people through treatment who don't have the financial backing of a sporting body. The Newcastle midfielder is unable to join in because he has just undergone surgery on his right foot but he is there anyway. [LNB]Barton chooses the day, in the stunning surroundings of Shugborough Hall near Stafford, to reflect for the first time on the last two-and-a-half years of his life. On what he has done to change his lifestyle. He does not want sympathy and he certainly does not expect it. Barton is bright, articulate and engaging. But he is not interested in trying to alter the widespread opinion of him with diplomatic responses to difficult questions.[LNB]Instead, he invites us into a moral maze built on the morality of the tough Liverpool streets he grew up on. He expresses regret, but then tries to justify his behaviour. He regrets what has happened but he does not necessarily regret punching the guy in Liverpool or 'defending' himself against Dabo. And he cannot say with any real confidence that he will be able to control his temper in the future if he is provoked. All he can do, he says, is try to learn to walk away and do his best to avoid such confrontations. [LNB]It is clear that alcohol was a big part of the problem. 'My last drink was the night I got arrested,' he says. [LNB]Enlarge 'Although I can't actually remember the last drink because I was pissed. The CCTV footage shows that. I've now gone almost two years without a drink. I went to AA meetings when I was in prison. And I hope I've gone some way to turning my life around. If I'm out of my brains at 5.30am in Liverpool city centre, I'm putting myself in a situation where a gang of scallies can have a go at me.' [LNB]He says he has watched the CCTV footage of that night. Of him knocking a guy to the ground and following up with a flurry of punches. [LNB]'When I watch it I feel like it's not me. Like an out-of-body experience. You know it's you but you watch it thinking anything could have happened. The circumstances and the ramifications of what could have happened are very scary. Someone could have killed me. I didn't know who I was scrapping with. It could have been the hardest man in the world. [LNB]'And remember, I've seen the whole incident. You've probably seen 40 seconds on YouTube. There was over 21 minutes of footage. There was a lot that went on there. There is a lot of regret and a lot of things I wish I'd done differently at the time. [LNB]'But, hand on heart, for me to say I regret it would be to condone the behaviour of people towards me that night. Obviously I regret the consequences of it, I regret the anguish and hurt I caused to people, not just in my personal life but at the football club. People had stuck up for me - said I wasn't as bad as a lot of people thought. And I spat it back in their faces.' [LNB]So can he explain why he snapped? [LNB]'I've never enjoyed the attention we sometimes get as footballers,' he says. [LNB]'I've never been comfortable with the whole fame thing. I'm just a normal lad from a working class background who wanted to play football because I love it. I never got into it because I wanted to earn loads of money, have flash cars and go out with flash birds. That's never been what it is about for me. [LNB]'For me it's about the football. I dedicate my life to being the best I can be. It hasn't been plain sailing, sometimes when I've failed to control the things going on around me and sometimes because of things that are out of your control, like injuries. But it's only ever the football for me. [LNB]'That night I'm out with my cousin and my brother and someone comes up to me and asks me why I didn't sign for Everton. How do you answer that? There's not a right or wrong answer. You can't win. [LNB]'And then things are said. And I object because I wouldn't go up to someone I didn't know and start giving them a hard time. I'm a human being and when someone comes up to me and says derogatory things about me and my family, I am going to react. What doesn't help, I realise, is that I'm out of my brains. [LNB] Sobering thought: Recovering Barton has quit alcohol in his bid to reform his reputation to a positive one both off and on the pitch for his club Newcastle United[LNB]'But I can't sit here today and say that had it been 10 o'clock and had I been sober I would not have reacted exactly the same way. Maybe I would. Maybe I would have handled it better. But I can't be sure. The best I can do is avoid the situations in the first place.' [LNB]There is an obvious flaw in one major aspect of the argument. He cannot blame booze for what happened on a training pitch at Manchester City, when he unleashed the punches that left him with a suspended prison sentence and 200 hours of community service. Not to mention an FA ban. [LNB] Again Barton tries to explain, again he attempts to justify his actions. [LNB]'There's no CCTV footage of that incident and had I not been in jail already I'd have stuck with my original "not guilty" plea. [LNB]'But when you've been in jail you don't want to go back and if you're offered a lifeline and they tell you that if you plead guilty you won't have to do any more jail, you take it. I didn't feel I was guilty but I couldn't risk another six months in jail. And I knew it would be down to a jury to decide and I had already been in jail for an assault that was played out in the media. [LNB]'I felt people would have already formed an opinion of me. When I do something wrong it's like I've committed mass genocide. In the end, I had to swallow my pride but I will go to my grave feeling I wasn't guilty. That Ousmane was the aggressor.'[LNB]In court it was acknowledged that Dabo had surged towards Barton and shoved him first. Just as it was recognised that, while Barton emerged from the violent altercation unscathed, Dabo suffered severe facial injuries. [LNB]He says: 'In my eyes he was the aggressor. He was the one who turned and came towards me and I was just fortunate in that I was able to defend myself better than he was. [LNB]'And where I'm from, if you throw one punch you're in for a penny, in for a pound. I can't just come up to you and throw one punch and then say, "Hang on a minute" when you punch me back. Which was the way Ousmane wanted it. I knew when he was coming towards me he wasn't coming to tickle me. We've obviously had words and I wasn't prepared to take the chance and I defended myself. In my opinion he was the aggressor. Ousmane is not an aggressive lad, but he was the aggressor that day and it's a deep regret of mine that I didn't stick with the "not guilty" plea.' [LNB]He admits to 'going overboard' in the way he defended himself, says it's the way he was built, the way he was raised and something he now has to deconstruct. 'It's a work in progress,' he says. [LNB]On a council estate in Huyton, he says, you had to be able to take care of yourself. [LNB]'I've never actually been much of a fighter,' he says. [LNB]'I never boxed or anything like that. But where I'm from if you couldn't defend yourself, you had your trainers nicked off you. Where I'm from there are no rules. If you pick a fight it doesn't end until someone goes down.' [LNB]Walk the line: Barton aims to put the past behind him[LNB]The question is a sensitive one, given that his half-brother Michael was convicted for his part in the horrific murder of Anthony Walker, but is he the product of a violent family? [LNB]'I'm not going to sit here and blame my upbringing,' he says. [LNB]'I had a fine upbringing. You had to be tough and if I'd gone in the house crying and complaining that someone in the street had hit me, I'd be told to get back out there and sort it out. If they had beat me with their fists, I'd be told to pick up a stick. [LNB]'Sadly, they settle disputes with more than that now. And the kids think that it's like a computer game. If you press the start button they will just come back to life again. But it wasn't violent in our house, no.' [LNB]It is not easy arguing his case but there does seem to be another side to Barton. [LNB]A side that says he is not beyond salvation. That says behind the red mist and red cards there is some human decency. Adams sees it, Kay sees it. [LNB]Paul Tyrell, the highly-respected former director of communications at City who was at the club when Barton clashed with Dabo, sees it. [LNB]Tyrell remains Barton's friend and someone who offers him guidance. Even Shearer appears to have forgiven him for what happened at the end of last season. [LNB]They met again in the winner's enclosure at Redcar when their horses finished first and third (Shearer's won) in a race. 'The way he handled it was great,' says Barton. [LNB]'He made a bee-line for me, I was taken aback to be honest, but he went up a lot in my estimation that day.' [LNB]He cannot resist having a dig at Xabi Alonso, now of Real Madrid but then of Liverpool, calling him 'a play-actor who had a hand in getting a lot of players sent off last season'. And while he says the tackle on Alonso was 'reckless', that he let himself down as well as 'Alan and the club', he insists he had to stick up for himself after what was said in the dressing room. [LNB]'When it got personal I had to say, "No, this isn't right",' he says. [LNB]'So I stood up for myself. In hindsight I could have handled it differently. It would have been easier. But then Alan, in hindsight, would probably have handled it differently, too, and not said what he said 15 minutes after I'd been sent off in front of all the players.' [LNB] National service: Barton hopes his best football is yet to come and he can add to his solitary England cap, when he came on against Spain at Old Trafford in 2007[LNB]So what now? What does he hope to achieve, having just turned 27? A second England cap perhaps? [LNB]'I hope my best football is yet to come,' he says. [LNB]'I was fortunate to get one England cap, but I am never going to be judged on football ability alone in the future and I have come to terms with that. [LNB]'If it means I won't play for England again then so be it, it is a consequence of the choices I have made. [LNB]'I am just going to be me, live the life I think is right, help the people who help me. Try and make the people who come across my path go away with a better opinion of me. I am on a hiding to nothing. You meet me and you think, "Yob, thug". But over time I will try to change that. [LNB]'Pete used to say if I give people a rose, they only see the thorns. That's how it is going to be with me. [LNB]'I have been face down in the s**t, at the lowest ebb I can get to, the flag as low on the mast as it can go and I am fighting now to get it back up. [LNB]'Not by bending over backwards and trying to be the nicest guy in the world. People would say, "He's phoney". I will just try and be a better person. I already think I've come on leaps and bounds. [LNB]'I could have pissed my career up the wall. I remember sitting in the holding cell waiting to go into court and there is all this graffiti on the walls. I'm just reading it when I see this message left by someone. "I don't know why you are here, what you are here for but someone wants you to learn a lesson. Don't be a fool and don't put yourself in a position where you have to read this again to learn". It was like someone had put something in my way. Like a light had come on.' [LNB]A light that stayed on even when that prison cell door slammed shut. [LNB] Ukraine v England live! Sign up to watch the match with MailOnlineNewcastle midfielder Barton ends his spat with former boss ShearerAshley edging closer to Newcastle sale as South African holds bid talksChris Hughton won't let takeover talk disrupt Newcastle's promotion push [LNB]
