Ups and downs with Rudy Austin

When Rudy Austin describes life as a footballer as a “job”, he isn’t being a joyless cynic. Austin is sharing Marcelo Bielsa’s view of what it takes if you want to excel as a professional player. “Being the best, it takes away happiness,” Bielsa told his players at Marseille. “It takes away hours with your wife. It takes away hours with friends. It takes away parties. It takes away fun.”

If Austin wanted to play football purely for fun, he would have continued playing in his native Jamaica. But he’d turned down opportunities to go to college so he could focus on playing football, and playing football in Jamaica wasn’t going to secure him and his family financially. If he wanted to look after his family, he would have to play abroad. If he wanted to play abroad, he would have to be one of Jamaica’s best. If he wanted to be one of Jamaica’s best, he would have to treat playing football as a job.

“The structure of football is killing us [in Jamaica], the professionalism,” Austin says in an interview with YouTuber RyanLFC. “The talent is there, but being around some of the players it’s like they’re fearful of being successful. If you have the talent, make use of it.”

Earlier in the interview, he says:

“You can’t play football locally and financially take care of your family. I don’t play football for fun, it’s a job, and I always had that in the back of my brain over the years because I have kids and I have a wife. I have my family to take care of, so you have to take it serious and be professional and know that if you want something out of the game, no disrespect to Jamaica, but you’re not going to get it here if you want something substantial to set you up for the future. [Moving abroad] was an easy decision to make.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvobm-JCo4M&ab_channel=RyanLFCXtra

It might have been an easy decision, but that didn’t make it straightforward. Austin had already started collecting the first of his 84 caps for Jamaica when he was playing domestically for Portmore United at the beginning of his career, but a serious injury threatened to leave him looking for another job after all. The story of the injury contains everything you need to know about Rudy Austin the footballer:

“I scored a free-kick nearly from the halfway line. It was a semi-final. That night the cruciate ligament in my knee just ripped, but I continued playing. I was out for two years.”

Austin underwent three surgeries on his knee. One doctor told him he would never play again. Wanting to get the best possible treatment, his agent brought him to England, and Stoke City. Austin spent the next two years travelling back and forth between the Caribbean and the Potteries every three or four months for rehab.

“Everything was taken away from me,” Austin says. “But knowing me, I’m stubborn, and just worked hard. Over the years I always had knee problems.
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“I never stopped working. Even when people don’t believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. I never stopped working. I didn’t give up.”

Fellow countryman Ricardo Fuller had just joined Stoke, and became Austin’s “big brother”. Rudy knew he had to work hard, but Fuller was proof of just how hard he would have to work to play in England. On top of his rehab, if Fuller was in the gym, Austin was in there with him.

Impressed by his attitude, once Austin was fit again, Stoke boss Tony Pulis offered him a two-week trial. Within two days Pulis told Austin he wanted to sign him for £1m. But having not played for two years, Austin didn’t qualify for a work permit.

“In every low point there are opportunities,” says Austin. Stoke signed Seyi Olofinjana from Wolves instead. On Olofinjana’s first day in training, they were stretching next to each other, and Austin told the new recruit about how his injury had prevented him gaining a work permit. Olofinjana had first moved to Europe from Nigeria to play for Brann in Norway, and rang his former club after training, telling them that if they needed a midfielder, he had one to recommend. After Brann watched Austin play for Jamaica in a World Cup qualifier against Canada, they agreed a season-long loan in August 2008, with Stoke having an option to sign Rudy permanently halfway through. Stoke were interested in January, but again he was denied a work permit. Austin signed permanently at Brann instead. It was everything he had worked so hard for, yet he signed the four-year contract “with a heavy heart”:

“It was a culture shock — the food, the weather. You’re homesick. Honestly, I signed a four-year deal with a heavy heart. I’m at Stoke and I’m around my big brother Fuller, and you just feel a part of their thing. I’m in England where I have a brother and some friends there. You just feel at home, and then you have to move to a different country. You don’t know the language, you don’t get the same food, you don’t have the same friends. My girlfriend, my wife now, she couldn’t come because she was in university. I was just there alone. But I knew this was my opportunity, so even though I signed it with a heavy heart, I always think long term and knew this would set me up for the long term, so I had to just fight it through.”

Austin’s life in Norway consisted of training with Brann, going back to his hotel, sitting on his bed talking to friends and family over a computer, then returning to training the next morning to do it all again.

“I always put football first,” he says. “Why should I go partying and running about the place when it’s not going to benefit me?”

In 2011, he was named the league’s Player of the Year, and was taken on trial by Neil Warnock at QPR in December of the same year. Warnock was sacked by QPR at the start of the following month, but by the end of the season he had replaced Simon Grayson as manager at Leeds. Warnock didn’t do much right at Leeds, particularly when it came to transfers, but one move he did get right was returning to sign Austin in the summer of 2012.

“I have a brother who supports Man U,” Austin says, “and he always told me I’d play for Man U. But I ended up playing for Man U’s rivals Leeds United. I am happy with that aspect of it.
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“The Championship is a different level of speed. Sometimes after five minutes I’d want to come off.”

Austin’s form was up and down over his three years at Leeds, undoubtedly hindered by the complete shitshow of a club around him. His ferocious tackling and shooting endeared him to supporters. Given his attitude and physical attributes, I suspect Bielsa might have loved him. But Elland Road wasn’t a happy place during that time.

“You have to develop that tough skin. When I was at Leeds I’d play one game and I’d do well and it would be, ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ You play the next week and lose and you’ve got fans saying, ‘You’re shit, you’re this, you’re that.’ Sorry about my language.”

Austin was offered the chance to stay at Leeds for longer, but by the summer of 2015, the club had been taken over by Massimo Cellino and adopted a policy of only offering one-year deals to players over the age of thirty. Sheffield Wednesday were offering a three-year contract, and Rudy’s mind was made up.

“The maths is easy, one or three,” he says. “I put my family first as usual, so I took the three years.”

Wednesday never signed Austin, as the recurring theme of his earlier career returned to scupper the move. The England national team’s desperate showing at the 2014 World Cup prompted the FA to change the rules around work permits in an attempt to encourage clubs to give more opportunities to domestic players. Unless a deal involved a significant transfer fee, signings had to come from countries in the top fifty of FIFA’s world rankings, rather than the top 75 it had been previously.

Essentially, players like Austin were blamed for players like Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard being unable to beat Costa Rica. Six months earlier, Leeds manager Neil Redfearn was speaking about the positive impact Rudy was having on the young English players he was developing amid interest from Wigan:

“We’ve got a young squad and the good seniors we need to keep. Rudy has been in the side and, for me, he is not for sale, at all costs. We want to try and keep Rudy because you look at your Cooks and your Taylors and your Byrams and your Mowatts and you need your Rudy Austins in there to give them that lift and give them that experience.

“The point of the matter is if we are climbing and we are building then you keep your better players and you add better players to it. You don’t let your better players go, simple as.”

After three years at Leeds protecting the club’s best domestic prospects from cloggers in the opposition’s midfield and frustration from the terrace, as well as setting an example for how hard they need to work off the pitch, Austin was forced to leave the country and join Brondby in Denmark. He had the misfortune of being signed by Thomas Frank, although he describes him as “one of the best human beings you will ever meet on the planet.” Everyone should be allowed one lapse in judgement.

Towards the end of the interview, Rudy mentions he is considering getting into coaching. Listening to him speak, I think he would be great at it. Ryan is an enthusiastic, excitable interviewer, jumping in and over Austin’s answers on occasion, but there are times when he goes silent reflecting on what Austin is saying, because it is offering a perspective about Jamaican football he hasn’t considered. After two hours of Rudy talking about professionalism, the interview ends with Ryan’s phone going off twice and him taking the call the second time. Rudy doesn’t say anything, he just goes quiet and stares into the camera. I don’t think Ryan will make that mistake again.

The interview generally focuses on football in Jamaica rather than Leeds, but when discussing his pride at representing the national team, Rudy says something that suggests he was always made for Elland Road.

“It’s always a pleasure to play for your country, good times or bad times, because that’s life. You go through ups and downs.” ⬢