An exclusive interview with Andy Griffin.
I spoke to the former Newcastle United and England Under 21s star via zoom on Thursday March 26th.
The one-time NUFC defender is currently running the Andy Griffin football academy near Stoke.
We began by talking about him signing for NUFC in 1998 before moving on to his memories of playing under three different managers until 2004, as well as his thoughts on Newcastle United in the present day.
(ED: This epic interview covers a lot of ground and has been split into four parts. This is the first of the four, with the other three to follow in the coming days. Our thanks from The Mag to The Armchair Fan for this top quality interview with Andy Griffin)
When Newcastle United approached you in 1998 with a view to signing, did it take much persuading for you to agree to join the Toon?
It didn’t take much persuading, actually it took no persuading at all!
I was still a teenager at the time and was playing in the Stoke City first team. Stoke were struggling near the bottom of the Championship and both Newcastle and Leicester were interested in me. Leicester had bid a bit more, two-hundred-and-fifty thousand pounds more than Newcastle, which was a substantial amount of money for a Championship team in those days. So Stoke were keen for me to sign for Martin O’Neill, although they weren’t aggressive about it and didn’t pressure me at all.
I was adamant I wanted to sign for Newcastle United because they were the bigger club. I’d always said that the only teams I could never turn down would be Newcastle and Liverpool.
Liverpool because of my Liverpudlian roots. The reason I couldn’t turn down NUFC was that I’d been at the Stoke v Newcastle League Cup match in 1995 when the Geordies brought four thousand fans to the Victoria Ground. They had Ginola, Ferdinand, Beardsley and Gillespie. It was such a star-studded line-up, they just had this aura about them. I knew then I could never turn Newcastle United down if the opportunity came along to sign and be a part of that.
Going from Stoke to Newcastle was a huge step up not just in football but in life too, things were much more intense and it was quite intimidating at first for a young lad. I was used to getting the bus to training and all of a sudden I was being chauffeur-driven.
I walked through the door and saw Alan Shearer! We had Stuart Pearce, John Barnes, Ian Rush as well as Kenny Dalglish as manager. We also had David Batty, Rob Lee and Gary Speed. A lot of people were telling me what a great night out Newcastle was but I was there trying to break into the first team, not find my favourite drinking hole!
It was a huge move for me. The standard and quality was so much higher. My world turned upside down really but I was able to focus on my football. Alan Shearer and Stuart Pearce were my heroes but I soon learned they were just people and not from another world. I wanted to be professional, listen to what they had to say and take on board any advice. I had a desire to stay grounded and hungry and that’s the attitude I applied so I was able to settle down quite quickly.
When you first moved to the North East, was it a surprise just how passionate the city of Newcastle is about the football club?
I’d had a little taste of it with the away fans coming down for that League Cup tie so I knew there was huge noise and a real buzz about the place. The difference between Newcastle and other big clubs is that there’s only one club for the entire city and that brings its own pressure due to the intensity.
I never really felt that pressure as I was never one of the star players and I was always happy to chase lost causes, stay grounded and give one hundred percent, I wasn’t just there to collect the money and fans respected that. If I was to go out and only give eighty percent, I would have been terrible because my game was all about tacking and commitment, blood and thunder.
I came from a working class background and I was very aware of life outside of football and how hard people have to work to make ends meet. My mum prepared me for that and I felt that fans wanted to see the same attitude on the pitch.
Footballers are maybe a little more disconnected in this day and age of social media as not everyone is trustworthy and I understand that but most of the clubs I played for had working class roots and I always gave one hundred percent for them.
Some players couldn’t handle the pressure and the demands of the club and they didn’t last long, that’s the mental side of the game rather than the physical. When you’re having a bad game do you go hiding? Do you feign an injury to get off the pitch? Or do you stand tall, say ‘give me the ball’ and try to correct those wrongs.
Newcastle fans are often described as insular in the media. How welcomed were you when you moved up north?
I was very welcomed, I think my signing may have fallen under the radar a little bit because we’d just signed the Swedish international Andreas Andersson so everyone was wanting to see how he’d fit into the team, playing alongside Shearer. The focus was on him rather than me.
Gary Speed also signed only two days after I did, he was a huge signing for the club. I was staying at the same hotel as him and he gave me a ring to see if I’d like a lift to training. I was an Everton fan growing up so that was mind-blowing. I was given the thirty-eight shirt number and my challenge at the time was to eventually get number two. The fact we’d made two big signings when I joined helped keep the pressure off me a little bit.
I lived on the Quayside for a month but I decided to buy a little bungalow just north of Morpeth as I knew this was when the hard work really started. I hadn’t made it yet, I’d signed but I wanted to make the first team. A lot of young footballers don’t just have challenges on the pitch, they have challenges off the pitch and that includes how they socialise and cope with being in the limelight where people are watching to see if you slip up. I was very fortunate in the sense that my upbringing made it easy for me to keep away from a lot of those kinds of challenges.
Which players influenced you the most during your time at NUFC?
There’s three players that really stand out:
Alan Shearer for his sheer professionalism and iconic status in football. Physically and mentally, the man is a monster! His work ethic and desire to win, I was just in awe of that. I have the utmost respect for his hunger, modesty, longevity and mental strength.
I remember after the 1998 World Cup, he’d scored a penalty and I asked “how do you cope with that kind of pressure and not fall to pieces with the hopes of a whole nation on your shoulders” but he was able to just take
it in his stride. He took the rough with the smooth. He was very approachable as well.
Stuart Pearce – I was a little rough around the edges and loved a tackle. I already idolised him when watching his goal and celebration against Spain at Euro ‘96 so I was always willing to learn from him.
These players don’t make it through luck, they don’t have such incredible careers by chance, so I understood the mechanics of success and what it takes to have that longevity. I was never as good technically as Shearer or Pearce but I’d like to think I had a similar mentality, a similar hunger and desire as well as that fighting spirit.
The late, great Gary Speed as well for being a great pro and a good person. It’s not very often the world gets to see these guys as people, they only get to see them as footballers, but I had the luxury, the honour and the privilege of getting to know them, spend time with them and find out how approachable they were and how they were happy to lead by example. I would say those three as players but I had some incredible managers as well.
Issue 121 – April 1999
Were you frustrated with the lack of first team opportunities you were given between signing in Jan 1998 and the end of that season?
No, I was playing in the Championship previously and was only eighteen. I was happy to keep my head down, work hard in training and learn from the senior players. When I made my debut at home to West Ham, it gave me a bit of a reality check as the standard was so much higher than anything I’d previously experienced.
Kenny Dalglish wasn’t sure exactly where he wanted to play me; a full-back or even in midfield. I was competing for these positions in training against players who had finished second in the league the previous season so was happy to be at the club and developing as a player. The reason I didn’t play more was because I wasn’t yet ready, I was in a squad with world-class superstars, football royalty. I was happy to be patient, not be too hard on myself and just try to give myself the best opportunity to get into the first team. I wasn’t sulking about lack of opportunities, I only played four games that season but was learning a lot from senior professionals.
In May 1998, we reached our first FA Cup final for twenty-four years. What do you remember about the build-up as well as the match itself?
I was gutted I wasn’t playing (laughs), I was actually cup-tied as I’d played for Stoke in the FA Cup earlier in the season. I don’t think I was good enough to get in that team anyway, we had Pistone, Barton and Steve Watson all ahead of me.
I grew up watching the Cup Final when it was the showpiece event of the whole season. My favourite memory is Everton beating Man Utd in 1995. The FA Cup has lost a bit of its sparkle these days as clubs are more interested in competing in the Champions League but back then the build up was magical. It was at the Old Wembley as well with the twin towers so we had everything that came with it. The drive in was magical. Unfortunately we played against an exceptional Arsenal team with Marc Overmars who won the double but the next season, the opportunity to play in the Cup Final came around again.
When we beat Tottenham in the 1999 FA Cup Semi-Final, did you as players believe our name was on the cup having lost the last year’s final?
I thoroughly believed we were going to win that match.
In the semi-final, I was marking David Ginola who had given me the run around earlier in the season at White Hart Lane. He’d done that to a lot of full-backs in his career. I’d never received a pasting like that, it just hadn’t happened to me before.
Ruud Gullit kept faith in me and played me in the semi-final. On the day of the semi-final, I was able to learn from my mistakes and adjust things. I won that battle and got the better of him. We won 2-0 with two goals from Alan Shearer. My whole family and a fair few mates were there at Old Trafford and it was one of the finest moments in my whole career. I felt that day, I’d finally made it and really earned my place in that team and I was feeling very confident for the final.
What memories do you have of playing in the 1999 FA Cup final?
It was amazing!
A few years earlier I was watching it on TV and now I was starting in the final. We were in our suits and had all the build-up that goes with that. We met Prince Charles, now the King of England. To walk out at Wembley with the anthem playing was incredible.
Issue 122 – May 1999 Photo by The Mag
Man United had rested a few players as they were competing in the Champions League final a few days later in Barcelona. I was playing against another exceptional winger in Ryan Giggs in a team that went on to win the treble. Roy Keane went off injured early on and you’re thinking that the stars are aligning and we’re going to win the cup. Unfortunately, Teddy Sheringham came on and scored within two minutes which was a bit of a reality check as we were then facing an uphill battle.
We still had bags of quality in our team – Shearer, Ferguson, Ketsbaia, Lee…but it wasn’t meant to be. We didn’t play that well in the final but I was pleased with my individual performance even though I was gutted we lost. It was an amazing experience.
(ED: Our thanks once again to Andy Griffin and The Armchair Fan, part two of four of this epic interview will go up on The Mag on Monday)