HE SAYS Wayne Rooney is the best player he’s ever played with, was managed by David Moyes and had a legend like Paul Gascoigne as just “a humble team-mate”.
But this afternoon Nick Chadwick, scorer of six Premier League and cup goals for Everton between 2002 and ’05, arrives back in the focus of the nation’s TV cameras wearing the red of Tamworth FC.
At 31, the road from Goodison to the Lamb Ground has been a bumpy one; injuries playing a part in him ending up a Conference player by 2009 with a Chester City side heading for liquidation, before stints at Barrow and Stockport led him back to his second club, Plymouth Argyle, in 2011.
Currently on loan until January 4, the man known as ‘Chaddy’ knows this afternoon’s live ITV game against Bristol City is a shop window to land a permanent deal from Dale Belford, the Lambs boss he keeps reminding of how valuable his three FA Cup goals have so far been.
Or to earn a contract closer to the family home he wants to re-establish with wife Steph and two-year-old daughter Ola in the north-west, where the striker has spent much of his career.
“I’ve been here a couple of months now and it’s gone well,” says Chadwick, who has five goals in seven starts, including two in the fourth qualifying round win over Solihull Moors and the winner against League Two Cheltenham Town in round one.
“Nothing’s permanent, but the manager at Plymouth (John Sheridan) has made it clear I’m not going to be part of his plans, and the fact I’ve come here and scored goals won’t, I don’t think, make any difference to that.
“I’ve loved it at Tamworth and the Cup’s been great. I knew there was going to be a lot of cup games so I was glad there wasn’t any clause preventing me playing in them, because the point of me coming here was to play games.”
Chadwick has spent five years at Plymouth in two spells, and talks of his “love” for the club and for Devon.
But Merseyside is where he moved from Staffordshire as a 16-year-old to chase his football dream, and the plan is to return to his wife’s homeland after helping a club from his own.
“We’re trying to get a house sorted at the moment, but since I’ve been at Tamworth I’ve spent a few nights with my family around here, a couple of nights a week in the club house with Richie Baker, Matt Regan and the assistant-manager, Scott Lindsey, and others with my in-laws in Liverpool,” says Chadwick, sorting out children’s TV to keep his little girl occupied as we chat on the phone.
“It’s been tough, especially spending nights away from Ola. I always say that it’s a part of the game that, especially at the lower levels, people just don’t understand. It’s your livelihood like any other job.
“You leave one club and go to another seven or eight hours away and people think, ‘He’s got a club, that’s great’.
“Well, yeah, that’s all right, but if you’ve got a missus and family you are leaving the other end of the country for a short-term contract and you might not see them for two or three months, it’s not the easiest thing to do.
“I’ve been lucky in some ways because eventually the whole family went down to Plymouth. Steph was on maternity leave and then studying, so she could, but she does have her job to go back to in the north-west.
“I was coaching at the Everton Academy, which I had to leave, and Steph had to leave her family and friends when we’d just had a baby, and these are the things that people don’t think about.
“Ola was just a few months old when we left the family behind, so they are absolutely delighted with the prospect of us moving back north, if that happens, because they haven’t had much time with her.
“A lot of people see a game of football on a Saturday afternoon as a release from their daily life and situation, and sometimes forget that the lads that are actually playing are in the same boat.
“We’ve all got families, we all face completely the same issues as everyone else – especially at the lower end because you haven’t got that network of support available as you have at the top.”
At least at Tamworth, where boss Belford is joined by son Cameron in goal and dad/grandad Buster as kitman, he has been made to feel part of a football family.
“I think it sums the club up great how you’ve got Dale and Cam, with Buster behind the scenes,” says Chadwick. “It gives that family, close-knit community feel to it.
“Dale has been great with me. I obviously wasn’t enjoying not being part of things at Plymouth. He knew that I had a good goalscoring record in the Conference, and he basically just said, ‘Come and enjoy it – no pressure on you whatsoever’.
“I believe I can still score in the Football League, but I keep joking with Dale that I’ve earned him a fortune with these FA Cup goals, so whatever the chairman gives him from the Cup run has got to go to anything he might be able to offer me in January!
“I’d love it to continue against Bristol City. It will be tough because they are a massive club, but they’ve had one or two problems of their own this season and you never know – it’s the FA Cup.”
