Pat Nevin interview: 'Nothing in the world ever worries me except that'

Anyone who has listened to Pat Nevin, the pundit, will be aware that he is an astute and acerbic observer of football.

Fri, 23 Jun, 2023 - 07:08

Dion Faning

“Life has moved on,” Pat Nevin says when he explains why he has written a memoir. More precisely, Nevin has written a second memoir, Football and How to Survive It.

The book is a nod to Life and How to Survive It, written by John Cleese and Robyn Skinner. Nevin’s book could have had the same title, because it is really about surviving life and what life throws at you as much as it deals with the dysfunction of football.

Anyone who has listened to Pat Nevin, the pundit, will be aware that he is an astute and acerbic observer of football. His way of surviving the game has always been to put it into perspective or to have a life away from football, something which placed him at an angle to the orthodoxy.

The more orthodox — or stereotyped — footballer had a life away from football too, but it wasn’t Nevin’s life. “In what sensible walk of life would you get fined for being sober, especially when your fitness was vital to the success of the job?” he asks in the book’s introduction and it opens with the arresting passage: “I am not the first ex-professional footballer to openly admit that I had an alcohol problem during my career. Some people in the game thought that I didn’t drink enough, and that was a problem.”

Nevin avoids falling into the traps that sometimes ensnares the old pro. Things weren’t better in his day (they were more or less the same) and players haven’t changed that much either.

His first memoir The Accidental Footballer dealt with his accommodation with those contradictions and it was, he says, a “joyous romp” through his career.

On the day it was published, his publisher asked him if he would consider another book. It’s already written, he told them and while the second book deals with the next stage of his career, it focuses more on family and events that he had never discussed before.

As he deals with the personal, Nevin also uses it to make a broader point. “You’re only ever seeing one side of a player. The other side is really interesting. You might think it’s all right to shout, tweet, abuse certain people but if you had the slightest clue of what they’re going through. Yes, they might be wealthy, but they’re human beings having a normal human life too and a difficult time. That was one of the things I wanted to get across.”

Nevin never suffered from too much abuse — “fans were nice to me” — but life still happened.

“We discovered our son’s autistic and we’ve never talked about it before to any journalist,” he tells me on a Zoom call from his home in the Scottish Borders.

If there is a sense of the world improving during the book, it is felt most profoundly through the increase in knowledge that surrounds autism which wasn’t there when Nevin and his wife Annabel searched for a diagnosis for their son Simon.

“You can use the word neurodiverse now and people understand what you’re talking about but then, absolutely no chance. It’s actually a different planet, the word autism would have been completely alien to people.”

The book begins with Nevin approaching the milestone age for a footballer — 30 — and dealing with the reality that the end is approaching. He has joined Tranmere Rovers from Everton - where the drinking culture was strong - and it ends in 2002 when Nevin, then 38, leaves Motherwell where he has been CEO as the club enters administration.

It is a chapter in his career that had passed me by and seems a surprising choice for the “indie kid” who was a union man and chair of the PFA. Motherwell was going to be different, he says, players would be looked after and the owner was a progressive. “We were coming from similar angles but he knew nothing about football,” Nevin says of the then owner John Boyle.

He wrote it a couple of years ago but as the book’s release date came closer, Nevin saw a parallel on the horizon. “I’ve written about somebody who knows nothing about football running a football club, This is not meant to be an allegory for Chelsea club,” he says with a laugh. “I was thinking people would think I’ve just thrown this together since Todd Boehly came in.”

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 09: Former player and BBC Radio broadcaster Pat Nevin looks on during the Premier League match between Newcastle United and Wolverhampton Wanderers at St. James Park on December 9, 2018 in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

There are always patterns in football and Nevin deals with them but the personal story is one that resonates and which he hopes will make a difference.

“There is beauty in some of the ways neurodiverse people see the world and we can learn from them,” he says. “I admire him as much as I admire any human being,” he says of Simon.

“I do a lot of talks to autistic societies and things like that and parents are at their wit’s end. I don’t tell them everything is going to be alright, because it’s not always going to be alright, But I tell them some of the pitfalls.”

The book talks about autism because Simon was happy for it to be written about.

“He’s accepting of it which he used not to be,” Nevin says.

Nevin works hard and cares about money in a way he never used to because of Simon. “I have to take care of him for the rest of his life, not our lives, his life. That changes the dynamic. I didn’t care about money before but I have to now. People often say to me ‘You’re the hardest working person in this business’. There was one reason for that, I have to earn for my family. I left the top level the year the big money came in. But cut the violins, there are no violins but this is what life can look like sometimes.”

The day I spoke to Nevin, his son was at a Bruce Springsteen concert on his own but Simon will always live with his parents and the future beyond that is always on Nevin’s mind.

“Nothing in the world ever worries me except that. Life’s going to happen, I’m going to die, we’re going to die. Nothing really gets to me. It’s not in my personality but it was brought home to me by Simon. In the back of my mind there always is that thought: what’s going to happen to him?”.

The week that Nevin’s book was published, his daughter also returned from nine months working as a doctor in New Zealand and much of the responsibility will fall on her. The book is about hope as well as the struggle, which Nevin admits was carried more by Annabel than by him.

“It was much much tougher for my wife, she had to deal with it while I was out earning a crust.” Nevin’s only regret about the book is that the publisher said there wasn’t space to include a chapter written by Annabel.

He wants the book to be hopeful.

“There are fabulous positives. The arc of the book takes you to where Simon’s in a good place. There are always messages when I write and when I broadcast there are messages. I’m basically saying you don’t know what’s going to go on and you don’t know how bad it’s going to be so try to live in the moment as much as you can.”

The moment can be full of surprises. When the book arrived, Nevin read some passages to Simon. “He can read perfectly well but like a lot of young people he’s not going to pick up a book.” Simon listened and said that’s good and left and went to work where he drives children with special needs to school. Driving, Nevin writes, is Simon’s “superpower”.

Nevin then had to go to London for work for a couple of days but while he was away, he called Annabel. In this world of surprises, she provided another one. “He’s not shut up about it yet,” Annabel told him as Simon talked about the book his father had written telling his son’s story. “He’s so happy.”

*Football and How to Survive It by Pat Nevin is out now