STUART JAMES
“
My own view is that in life, nothing really matters until you are 25.”
Senior Writer at the Athletic
Not knowing where you’re headed as a teenager is one thing. At least you have the gift of time on your side. For some, the calling doesn’t come along until much later. However, when it does it can provide that boost you need in life at just the right time. For Stuart James he had been on course to become a professional football player as a teenager with all the trappings that come along with it; the fame, the wealth, playing a game he loved for a living. Unfortu- nately, he experienced something common for many other sporting hopefuls, being thrown on the proverbial scrap heap at 16 only to have it happen three years later once again.
Picking yourself up after that is probably one of the hardest things to do, but during this time Stuart was also working in a prison. This period must’ve been quite a jolt to the system – perhaps one that was needed. As the saying goes, “the night is darkest just before the dawn,” and for Stuart that realization led him on a path which uncovered a passion, determination and drive that has propelled him to become one of the leading writers on football in the world. Speaking to Stuart was the longest back and forth of anyone I spoke to for this project, but I’m so happy we did connect as his story is fascinating and one we can all learn a lot from.
Jonathan: Did you ever think that writing about football was something you could do for a living?
Stuart: Not at all, really. I mean, every weekend my dad used to take me to watch Nottingham Forest. Every Monday at school you get asked to write what you did on the weekend and it would be- come a standing joke that every week I would write about football. It certainly wasn’t my plan, especially through secondary school when I was already training with professional football clubs in the hopes of getting a contract. I trained with Bristol Rovers, Southampton and then Aston Villa where I signed boarding school forms, so my childhood was dominated by football.
I knew in my head that I had to sort of always kind of keep going with academic work, even though football was such a big part of my life, but I had no thoughts about anything in life besides being a football player.
Then in January of the last year of school when I’m 15 me and my parents drive up to the club to talk about the next step and two people in this office just say, “we don’t think you’re going to make it.” I had grown a lot between 14 and 16 and it’s quite hard to adjust and it translated into my football as I wasn’t as effective as I had been. Driving back from there was the first time I felt lost at the age of 16. I suddenly had nothing, and it did make me think, but my head was still all about football. Luckily, a while later I got a call from Swindon and did two years as an apprentice and then one year pro. I worked so hard as an apprentice but when I turned pro, I just got distracted. I was living with three other young lads, which probably wasn’t the best decision for any of us and I just lost my way a little bit as I was going out, had a girlfriend and I just got distracted.
So, this is when you started working at the prison?
Yeah, it’s funny, I often say to people, my own view is that in life, nothing really matters until you are 25 which sounds a bit blasé.
I just can’t imagine many people have that real drive and direction at quite a young age, unless plan A has worked out for them.
That’s right though, I got released from Swindon and came home to my parents thinking, what do I do now? So I went and signed up for unemployment for a couple of weeks and went to the job center and god knows what was going through my mind, but I’m looking up at the job board expecting some amazing job for someone like me, who has no experience other than playing football. That was a rude awakening. The lady offered me all these terrible jobs so I ended up signing on, which was humiliating and then two weeks later I went back and said, I’ll do anything and got a job ironically working in a book shop, Waterstones, unpacking books for six months.
Then a job came up in Lay Hill open prison. I wanted to be- come a P.E. teacher, but that involved three years of university and there was no way at that point I was going to do that, so I trained to become one in the prison. You could be paid to be
a prison officer for a year working on the landing and then do that. So I took an 11-week training course at Wakefield learning controlling, restraint and all this kind of stuff. It was so tough; I was 22 but I looked about 15, and some of the people you are looking after, you are struggling to find anything positive to say to them about their outlook on life.
I was always trying to swap shifts as I was still playing semi- pro at Bath and so training Tuesday and Thursday nights, then a game on the weekend. Just trying to follow the dream to turn pro sometime, but it just wasn’t working out with the balance of work and playing and training, so I just focused on being an officer and playing and ditched the PE instructor.
So, at what point did the writing begin?
So, at Bath where I was playing, Ken Loach was a film director and one of the directors of the club. Ken’s just such a lovely, lovely man and I got to know him and talk to him a lit- tle bit after games and he had an idea about one of our players writing an article for the Bath Chronicle. I thought, straighta- way, because I had enjoyed writing at school that I would do it. I wasn’t really enjoying working in the prison and by this time I had accepted I wasn’t making it as a football player, I started thinking this could be something for me as I really enjoyed it.
So, I went back to my old school where I hadn’t seen my English teacher, Louise Bird for like nine years and said, I want to go to university and do a journalism degree.
We got every relevant university prospectus and started applying. I went to Bournemouth for the interview and it was massively oversubscribed as it’s quite a well-known course with Natalie Perks, BBC, David Ornstein, Harry Reekie from CNN having been through it. I sat down with Dan Hogan, the tutor and he said to me, “well, you don’t have any A levels. So, you haven’t done any academic work for nine years and worked in a prison, but you do have a reference from Ken Loach, and we have never had one of those before.”
How did you find it after taking nine years off from study?
Oh my god, I worked so hard. So much so that I annoyed other students. They would say, why don’t you get out more? I’d just say I already had my time doing that. They were doing just what they should at that point in their life.
I was doing a piece at university mocked up like the Observer about four sports people whose career had come to a premature end and I needed a fourth person. I really wanted Steve Smith, the high jumper who snapped his achilles. I rang his agent, who turned me down as I was only from university. I tracked him down and found out he owned a restaurant, so I called him and convinced him to meet me and we did the interview over a free meal at his restaurant. Best meal I had as a student.
That little anecdote is probably a sample of my doggedness, determination and commitment to go above and well beyond the course, so when I went for my interview with the Guardian I think they probably thought, well if these are the people he can get at university, imagine what he can do with the Guardian behind him. I was 28 when I started at the Guardian and so easily the oldest trainee for sure. There were way more people better qualified for the role, but I think they liked the fact I had life experience and that coming in later made me more rounded and more determined to throw everything into this job.
Are there any techniques to get you into a good flow of writing, like the flow state?
Coffee. Oh my god, coffee. I remember writing Jamie Vardy’s book was one of the most intense experiences ever, trying to do 90,000 words in a very short space of time, and then the coffee machine broke! It does sound silly but yes, coffee when I open the laptop.
I see it like an artist sees a work of art. Going back and refining it all the time, but I still find it comforting talking to other writers and hearing that they can also spend hours agonizing over an intro because it can be quite a solitary experience. Sometimes you’re thinking, my God is there anyone else who stares at a blank document for this long before working out the bloody intro?
What’s the work you are proudest of in your career?
Sometimes, there is a story to be told that resonates outside the world of football, and in doing so reminds us that there is a person behind every player. Abdelhak Nouri was a brilliant young Ajax player who was left with permanent and serious brain damage after collapsing on the pitch. Abderrahim, his brother, spoke with remarkable courage about ‘Appie’ and that story was one that took me six months of building trust with the family to tell their story. For those stories you feel a real duty to the family to tell the story well on those deeper emotional pieces.
Have you had any moments where you sit back and think? How is this what I do for a living?
Yeah, definitely and you try not to take them for granted. There was a moment watching Japan vs Belgium with David Coverdale and James Ducker which was a crazy game with Belgium winning in the last minute with a counterattack. I remember sitting there with those two that night and just looking at each other and laughing, watching this crazy game unfold, being on deadline and just thinking, this is our profession.
What would you tell your teenage self ?
I just wish I had been more patient, I think I was in such a rush to make some money, I Just wanted to do things as quickly as possible and I don’t think that I wanted to put in the hard yards to get where I needed to be. I was just doing everything in a short-sighted manner and I should have committed to what it would take to achieve something five, six, or seven years down the line.
You’ve been in journalism through the shift from print media to digital and The Athletic is 100% online, what’s been the biggest shift?
I think the workload has increased dramatically, and the Guardian was at the forefront in terms of just putting loads of stuff online. It sometimes went to quantity over quality. Thankfully, The Athletic is less about the news and the games and more about the stories and features.
Obviously tied to social media there is also then the need to be first. You do get some intelligent observations from social media now as I don’t think people can get away with writing in the way that they perhaps did 10-15 years ago. You know the old saying, ‘today’s paper is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.’ Well with online it’s there forever and if you’ve done a crap story you will get exposed. I’m sure some people from years gone by would say standards have dropped, but in other ways, it’s improved journalism as we’re being held accountable.