Blackpool keeper Gilks thanked parents with new motor for talking him out of quitting

Blackpool goalkeeper Matt Gilks has revealed how his parents convinced him to stick with football.

Gilks thanked his mum and dad by delivering a new car to their doorstep last week, paid for with a chunk of his bonus following ­Blackpool’s top-flight promotion.

The past, though, will never be forgotten. Three years ago, he moved from his home town club Rochdale to ­Norwich but never played a game there and was shipped out after a season by boss Glenn Roeder.

Gilks told the Daily Star Sunday: “Roeder came in and fired everyone apart from Delia Smith. I went to Blackpool, which then was like going from ­Manchester United to Bury.

“To me it felt like taking ten steps backwards. We didn’t have a full-time keeper coach and we trained ourselves some days.

“We washed our own training kit. Mind you, we still do that now – I don’t know whether it’s a cost- cutting exercise or a way of ­keeping our feet on the ground.

“My career, though, had taken a big dive as far as I was concerned. My attitude wasn’t 100 per cent and I don’t mind admitting that.

“One day, there was an 85-knot wind blowing across the training ground with horizontal rain in my face. I couldn’t seem to put a foot right and I threw my gloves on the ground and said to the coach at the time, ‘I’m off’.

“I walked in, got changed and went home. I sat in my parents’ lounge and said, ‘I’ve had enough. I don’t want to do it any more’.

“They talked me round. They said, ‘You’ve worked hard. Look what you have achieved. You can’t just throw it all away. Anyway, what will you do?’

“I always said I would have been a mechanic. A lot of my mates did banger racing and I was building cars for them. So I said I would do that.

“I didn’t really think about the ­implications of ­actually going to get a job and going back to schooling.

“Luckily my parents talked me out of it and I went back into training with a ­different attitude. But it took two weeks to get me around to that way of thinking.

“I really had thrown the towel in but I decided to give it another go. Not long afterwards I got my chance against Crystal Palace and I went on a five or six-game run.

“Now, I’m enjoying a season I will tell my grandchildren about. I’m just a lad from Rochdale ­playing in the Premier League and watching myself on Match Of The Day. It’s magnificent.”

 
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