The English Premier League (EPL) is likely the most popular football league in the world, and one of the older clubs in the League is West Ham United. It was formed in 1895 as Thames Ironworks, and got itself its current name, West Ham United, in 1900.
They joined the Football League in 1919 and is one of only 8 teams to have never gone below the second tier in the EPL. It has been one of the stars in the past, and has had many renowned players in its list.
Gambling has been a thorn in the side of English football, with a number of players from top flight clubs succumbing to gambling addiction in one form or the other. West Ham is no stranger to this situation, as a few of its players too have yielded to the temptation and lure of gambling, and paid the price for it. We take a look at 3 West Ham players who loved to gamble.
Matthew Etherington
Google ‘West Ham players and gambling’ and one name that pops up in the search results is Matthew Etherington. And with good reason: he loved to gamble and gambled away massive amounts, the kind of money that a regular working man wouldn’t probably see in an entire working career.
At the height of his gambling addiction, Etherington lost £1.5 million. And that was not all; he actually ran up debts to the tune of £800,000 and had to take a loan from the club to help clear his debts after he started receiving death threats from his creditors. He started visiting Gamblers Anonymous and also Tony Adam’s Sporting Chance Clinic to address his gambling habit.
Etherington has his own take on the issue of gambling in football, however, and says gambling companies should be able to identify vulnerable players and not accept bets from them.
John Hartson
One of the biggest names to be part of West Ham and also suffer from gambling problems is Celtic legend John Hartson. Hartson was one of the brightest young players of his era and was signed up by Arsenal in 1995 at the age of 19 for a mind-blowing £2.5 million, a British record payout for a teenage player at that time. He debuted at West Ham on 15th February, 1997 and remained there till January 1999, having played 73 times and scored 33 goals.
He developed a gambling problem that sent him on a rapid downward spiral. While he didn’t name an official number, he did say that at the height of his problem he was gambling up to tens of thousands of pounds each week. Only when his wife threatened to walk away with his kids did he realize the gravity of his problem and decide to seek help.
He then sought help and went on to turn life around. On October 5th, 2011, his mother’s birthday, he went to his first Gamblers Anonymous meeting and hasn’t placed a wager since. He was in fact chosen by Ladbrokes, a SPFL sponsor, to head Backing Responsible Gambling, a new campaign targeted at promoting responsible gambling.
George Parris
George Parris was a long-serving member of the West Ham United squad who signed up as an apprentice in 1981. He made his First Division debut against Liverpool in 1984-85 and stayed at West Ham until 1993, when he joined Birmingham.
Parris’ gambling problem started after he left West Ham. It became a serious problem that saw him slide down to depths that were almost tragic. Someone who spends 11 years at a club is someone you instantly take notice of, and for him to get to that abyss was unfortunate.
He borrowed money from literally everyone – family and friends – to fuel his gambling urge and reached a point where he had no one else left to ask and nowhere left to go. Things got really serious when he almost contemplated suicide. Talking to Daily Mail, he said there came a time when he drove up to Newhaven and looking out over the bridge and wondering what he was going to do.
He came clean about his addiction in 2010 and started attending sessions to combat it, regularly visiting Tony Adam’s Sporting Chance clinic. He had a relapse five years on and it was horrendous: desperate to lay hands on money for one more wager, he took out whatever money was there in his son’s building society account, placed a wager, and lost. But he didn’t give up; he went back to the drawing board again and is working on fighting his addiction.
Gambling in itself can be fun, if you do it responsibly. And with the number of online casinos and sports books around, you don’t even have to venture out of your home. Each of these casinos has strict policies and guidelines towards preventing underage gambling and encourages responsible gaming among their player base. You can sign up with any one of the reputed ones for a safe and reliable experience, and if you prefer slots over sports betting, try to use codes that are currently available at UK no deposit casinos rather than getting lured into depositing funds to finance your betting. Either way you should always be very careful and always talk about what you are doing as gambling secretively almost always leads to disaster and being transparent at least gives you the chance of a loved one or good friend monitoring what you are doing and perhaps pulling the handbrake on your activities before you approach anything near a dangerous level. Really a person who has had questionable gambling habits in the past like Parris should steer well clear of gambling again as it’s just too risky that he will get in too deep before he knows it.
The stance that players like John Hartson and Etherington have taken is great news for young players, because they are vulnerable to the lure of gambling. They are young and with a whole lot of money, and the natural urge could be to bet with it, for the fun of it or to build on it. The results are mostly disastrous. Hartson says he gets calls from a lot of managers and staff from various clubs asking him to work with a certain squad member, and he is only too happy to help.