Bruce remembers being turned down by Burnley
Sep 18 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal
STEVE Bruce will never allow the pain of rejection as a footballer to leave him as he prepares to return to the club which broke his heart as a teenager.
Bruce once believed he was destined to make the grade as a professional with Burnley after signing a schoolboy contract with the Lancashire club during his time at Wallsend Boys Club.
And he was devastated when he was informed he was being released at 16, the first of a series of rejections for the young defender, who was eventually offered an escape from a life working in the shipyards by Gillingham.
He said: “I was on schoolboy forms, but wasn’t offered terms and I was devastated. Amazingly, the manager at the time, Joe Brown, went on to become the chief scout at Man United.
“Even more amazingly, he didn’t recognise the little skinny kid from the North East he had let go, although I did remind him, believe me.
“I was the one he had turfed out. Myself and Peter Beardsley played in the same team and went everywhere. Me and him were the only ones not to get picked up because we were too small.
“We were late developers. Peter came on the train with me to Gillingham, and they didn’t even want him there.” He continued: “I had a job lined up in the shipyards at Swan Hunters. I went in for a week’s work experience and my cousin had got me a job to be an apprentice plumber.
“I was about to start when Peter Kirkley, who had taken me to Burnley and who still runs Wallsend Boys Club, took me to Gillingham. They took me on.”
And Bruce revealed: “That sense of rejection has always stayed with me. “At Gillingham, I used to have to get the bus. There were two of us, I used to have to sweep the terraces, clean the boots, wash the kits, the lot. “I didn’t get home until 7 o’clock at night, but it does give you grounding and a little bit of discipline, and an understanding of the value of hard work. That will stay with me forever.”Much has changed in football in the decades since, but Bruce knows the intimidating atmosphere at Turf Moor, where Sunderland are tomorrow the visitors, is not one of them, particularly when he read Sir Alex Ferguson’s complaints about the size of the dressing rooms earlier this season.“It’s a bit much when you’ve got to get changed in the corridor because there’s not enough room,” Bruce admitted. “I don’t think that it has changed and I didn’t think that it would change. I used to clean that changing room, so if there are any dirty marks there or anything like that, they’re nothing to do with me! “It’s part and parcel of the game of football.
