Stewart admits: Blues destroyed my career and so nearly my life
Former NI international opens up on his time at Fratton
FEW playing careers have perished at Fratton Park quite so brutally as Ian Stewart’s.
An established top-flight performer and Northern Ireland international, his July 1987 capture was greeted with delicious anticipation.
Within 18 months, the shellshocked left winger found himself in Division Four with Aldershot.
The sum total of his Pompey Division One participation was 16 minutes.
‘It destroyed me as a player, and nearly destroyed me as a person, which is probably a bigger thing,’ he told The News.
‘I wasn’t injured, I was made to train with the youth team on a cabbage patch. It was a dreadful period of my life in general, I was lucky to come out the other side.
‘It was awful, awful, so demoralising and humiliating. Alan Ball wouldn’t speak to me, I was ignored.
‘Peter Osgood was the youthteam manager and saved me as a person – because I was on the verge of doing something stupid.
‘You’re actually the first person I have ever spoken to about what really happened.’
In the summer of 1987, manager Ball was preparing for Pompey’s Division One return.
Back leading among lights football’s following a 28-year absence, he required a left-sided winger to replace Kevin O’Callaghan following his jettisoning to Millwall.
Ball identified Stewart, a 25-year-old wideman who had seen top-flight service with QPR and Newcastle, while amassing 31 Northern Ireland caps.
The previous summer, he had appeared in the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, including starting against Brazil, yet was now available on a free-transfer following a St James’ Park departure.
Stewart had been set for Crystal Palace, yet Ball persuaded him to instead choose Pompey.
In July 1987, the Belfastborn attacker committed to a two-year Fratton Park deal, joining fellow newcomers Terry Connor, Mike Fillery, Clive Whitehead, John Kerr, Ian Baird and Barry Horne in bolstering the newly-promoted Blues.
It proved to be the biggest mistake of his career.
‘No-one won. I lost out by not playing and they lost out by not using me but still paying my wages. There were no winners,’ he added.
‘I was meant to go to Palace, then Alan Ball phoned. We met at some pub on the Winchester bypass and he basically said we can do this, this and this and you can be the star of the team.
‘He talked me round. However, after pre-season I don’t think he ever spoke to me.
‘I appeared as a substitute in the first game of the season at Oxford United and never played in the league again.
‘In one of the early matches, we lost 6-0 at Arsenal. The reason why I remember that game in particular is because Alan Knight rolled the ball out and an Arsenal player came onto the pitch to steal it off him and set up a team-mate to score.
‘I was sitting at the back of the coach afterwards with Eamonn Collins, who was a bit of a joker, and he turned to me and said: “Tell you what, the way they played today, surely they are going to pick you after that”.
‘They never did, though, apart from a Full Members Cup game a few months later.
‘Ball seemed a nice-enough bloke, but nobody told me what was going on. After a while he stopped me training with them, instead I had to go with the youth team.
‘Messages were delivered through somebody else that I had to come in at all different hours to train, just running, running, running.
‘I was brought in on my day off to do running for no reason, just trying to humiliate me and
No-one won. I lost out by not playing and they lost out by not using me
Ian Stewart
others like Ian Baird and Mike Fillery. It toughened me up mentally, that’s for sure.
‘I remember playing a match against the first-team in training and being caught by an elbow – and Ball never did anything, he just let it go. I will always remember that incident.
‘Initially I was put into the reserves, but the reserves and first-team used to train together sometimes, so I ended up being with the youth team, training on this horrible cabbage patch behind the goals.
‘When the youth team had games against the Army or whoever, in the middle of nowhere on a Wednesday night, and I would play for them. Ball was trying to humiliate me.
‘What I will say is the youthteam manager, Peter Osgood, was magnificent. If it wasn’t for him, I would have been totally destroyed as a person. He was brilliant.
‘I just loved the man. He actually went to Ball and had an argument about us training with the youth team. He stood up for us all the time, he wasn’t a yes person like the rest of them.
‘Osgood was a great communicator, very empathetic, a really lovely person, and that was one good thing to come out of my time at Pompey.
‘He was so good to me in those 10-11 months because I was nearly destroyed as a person. I let myself go, I thought this was the end, he brought me back from the brink and was brilliant.
‘He kept my spirits going, having a laugh. Everything that’s good about football is Peter Osgood, I can’t speak highly enough of his help on and off the pitch, keeping me going.’
Stewart was still in the Northern Ireland frame upon his Pompey arrival, featuring five months earlier in a 1-1 draw with Israel in February 1987.
While the Fratton Park switch signalled the dramatic decline of his playing career, it abruptly halted international involvement, never representing his country again.
The Blues’ Division One campaign began at the Manor Ground in August 1987, with Stewart utilised from the bench for the final 16 minutes in a 4-2 defeat.
His second – and final – Pompey outing was as a 54th-minute substitute for Andy Perry in a Full Members Cup 3-0 loss to Stoke in November 1987.
There was a loan spell at Brentford in Division Three, consist- ing of seven matches, but, after a month, he returned to the Blues’ youth team.
Then, in January 1989, after 52 minutes of Pompey firstteam action over 18 months, his contract was cancelled by mutual consent.
It allowed Stewart to rebuild his career with Division Four strugglers Aldershot.
He added: ‘It wasn’t just the club’s fault, I let myself go as well. Things were getting worse at Pompey and I wasn’t looking after myself.
‘I am not one of those ex-players who say “Blame the club”. It was 50/50 really.
‘Living above the Pompey pub at the ground wasn’t healthy either. The landlady was brilliant, she really looked after me. I’d come downstairs and drink in the pub as well, but it wasn’t right.
‘Initially I was at a guesthouse for a week, then they had to give me accommodation for three months until I got somewhere, but I ended up in that pub for quite a while. Then I drove up and down from Fulham before buying a flat in Waverley Road, Southsea. ‘I didn’t help myself, I let myself go. I kept thinking “What’s the point because I’m not going to play”.
‘Not looking after yourself is a nice way of putting it, I don’t want to go into too many details. As a person, there is the whole holistic thing, you can put everything in there. ‘I found the players okay, coming into that dressing room was not a problem. Paul Mariner was a lovely person, Billy Gilbert as well, Lee Sandford was a nice lad, and I got on with Eamonn Collins. ‘Midway through that first season I was meant to transfer to Norwich and refused. I didn’t want to relocate there. Then a loan spell at Brentford came up and I thought I’d try it. ‘I did okay, but wasn’t the same player. I’d been playing with reserve and youth players so wasn’t at the top of my game. Had I come from a firstteam environment it would have been easier to adapt.
‘In the second year, my former QPR team-mate John Gregory came to Pompey as a coach and took the reserves. ‘He decided to have a word with Ball about my situation. He came back with: “Ian, there’s no point, there’s no use, he won’t listen. He just doesn’t want to play you”.’
Stewart would make 131 appearances for Aldershot, scoring five times, before departing just before their March 1992 liquidation.
He would finish the season with non-league Colchester United, making 14 appearances and scoring four times to help them win the Conference – and return to the Football League.
Stewart declined to follow them back to the full-time game, turning out for Harrow Borough before retiring at the age of 32, sensing a natural culmination to his career.
Later obtaining his coaching badges, he earned employment at the Irish Football Association in 1995 and is presently their grassroots development manager.
The 59-year-old said: ‘There are people who can manage people and there’s people that can’t manage people.
‘The people that can manage people are always the best communicators.
‘Funnily enough, one of the things I learnt from all my experiences in football is how to manage people. I would never do to others what was done to me.
‘The way I see it, I am going to help that person and find out why they are doing this, then support them. It could be a family reason, for instance, so I try to help, to work out a solution – that to me is good management.
‘I am a good listener, I always like to hear people’s backgrounds rather than just one-way traffic. Respect them.
‘I have no malice towards Alan Ball. Why should I? I always tell my staff that anger is what slows you down, it gets in the way of doing what you want to achieve.
‘I’ve had a lot of things happen to me since Pompey, good, bad or indifferent, but don’t get angry. Instead go and do something with your life.
‘It’s not about could’ve, would've, should've. I had many years of playing success, featured at the top of my level, appeared in the World Cup finals.
‘My career should have gone on for another five, six or seven years if I had kept myself as fit as possible, but I wasn’t a yes person.
‘I still stand my ground. If I’m in the wrong I will hold my hands up – and if I’m in the right, I can be quite stubborn.
‘Pompey tried to humiliate me, which you should never do to any person, never mind a footballer. But what can you do?
‘It’s 2021, you can’t bring it back. What I can do, though, is make sure other people are not treated in a similar fashion.
‘Sadly Peter Osgood died in 2006, but thank goodness someone like him was there to try to gee me up.
‘As a player at Pompey there was Theno chance, it was over, I was never going to reach the heights again, but as a person he saved me.
‘Pompey ruined me as a player but didn’t ruin me as a person – I have a lot to thank Peter Osgood for. Sadly I never got the chance.’
The number of first-team minutes played by Ian StewartinaBlues shirt