Madine, whose life as a strong EFL goalscorer was coupled with off-field incidents and headlines, gets into the ring next week against the ex-Swindon Town and Leyton Orient defender Jamie Sendles-White. Their three-round contest is part of A Night To Remember III, an event in London run by the former goalkeeper Graham Stack in aid of four charities.
A card full of former footballers includes Madine, who retired last summer and has been preparing for his boxing debut in Kieran Gorman’s Gateshead gym. The 36-year-old says he stumbled into agreeing to the fight, whose reality is now dawning.
“I always enjoyed watching boxing at my uncle’s with a Chinese, but I’ve never done any myself before. I watched both the previous [A Night To Remember] shows, and a friend next to me said, ‘Would you do it?’ I’d had a few drinks and I was confident. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll have a go’. When I got back from my holidays and sobered up, Stacky rang and invited me on. I thought, ‘Oh, God, I can’t back out now…’
“The scariest part was when I saw a clip of the lad I’m fighting. I thought it was meant to be a load of novices and a bit of fun, but it turns out this lad looks really good. I don’t think we ever played against each other, but I’ve met him and he’s a right big lump. He’s got youth, weight and experience on his side, so I’m up against it. But he seems a nice enough lad – and at the end of the day, we’re here to raise money for charities. So hopefully we can do them all proud.”
The event will support the Willow Foundation, Helping Hands Barnet, Playskill and Sport in Mind, and Madine refers to his own past when he says he and his fellow footballer-boxers are keen to do their bit.
“Most players come from very normal backgrounds, council estates and so on. They’re down-to-earth people that have probably experienced traumas and things that don’t always go your way in life. I managed to do OK, but I definitely grew up a less fortunate type of person. If money can go towards people like that who really need it, then we’re all happy to chip in.
Madine, far right, has been training in a Gateshead gym for his boxing debut in London next week (Image: Submitted)
“I don’t think enough gets made of this kind of thing. I know from experience that I have a little bit of bother in a town centre one night and it’s all over the papers and on social media. But footballers go to hospitals regularly, we stop to sign autographs for young kids in the street. You don’t really hear of them things, only the negative. So it’s good for this to be put on a bigger platform.”
Madine says the discipline required for a boxing event will help fill a post-retirement void for some, but he is grateful that he has coped well in the last 12 months since calling it a day.
“As footballers, we’ve had routine from 16 years old, and I’ve learned to appreciate the very smallest of things,” he says. “I’ll give you an example. When I was in prison – and you don’t get any lower than that – my treat was having a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and a can of Coke on a Saturday night with my room-mate. You have to have little things down the line to look forward to. For the last ten years I’ve tried to live my life like that.
“Since I retired, I’ve had a few weeks of training, but then allowed myself to enjoy myself on holiday – eat well for a couple of weeks, then go and have a big pizza. It seems to work for me.”
The striker recovered from an ACL injury at Blackpool to play for Hartlepool and Spennymoor, but said he had lost his love for the game when he retired last summer (Image: PA)
Madine says he and other footballers have an “addictive personality”, and this has also manifested since he quit the game. “I don’t think you get to play at good levels if you’re not addicted to winning. When I packed football in, I started taking up…I wouldn’t say bodybuilding, but I was lifting heavy weights twice a day. I was obsessed with getting bigger and getting my body in good shape.
“I wish I’d been that disciplined when I was 21. I’d probably have had a better career. I also did the Great North Run and now I’m training for boxing.”
Madine says he knows people who have struggled after hanging up their boots. “A lot of people turn to alcohol, and that’s probably something I would have done in my early 20s. But we all know what happens when I get drunk. It’s no secret. So I try to learn from them mistakes, not go down that road. I very rarely drink now, just on occasions. It’s the root of a lot of evil, alcohol…”
He knows this intimately from the serious incidents that scarred his goalscoring career, which saw him play for clubs such as Carlisle, Sheffield Wednesday, Bolton Wanderers, Sheffield United, Cardiff City and Blackpool. The striker, who was given his first chance as a teenager in Eric Kinder’s Carlisle youth team, flourished into a strong, streetwise centre-forward but was also, on separate occasions, guilty of assaults in pubs and nightclubs. In 2010 he was given community service over an assault in the Beehive in Carlisle, while he later served five months in jail over an incident in Sheffield in 2014.
The striker’s career involved plenty of goals plus off-field incidents (Image: Jonathan Becker)
He says he carried the regrets from these times into the less volatile latter phase of his career, adding that he even grew anxious about scoring goals, given how often some fans mentioned such incidents on social media whenever his name was mentioned.
“It’s hard, because I don’t think you really learn from things unless you’ve made the mistakes,” he says. “Unfortunately for footballers, when you make mistakes they get publicised, and they can give people a lasting impression of you.
“Me having trouble in a bar 15 years ago…of course I regret it. I’d love to sit down with the people [involved] now and apologise over a cup of tea or coffee.
“A lot of people just know you for that, but I try not to hold onto it. I think the people who really know me, who’ve sat with me sober, will all tell you what I’m like. They’ll tell you my manners are impeccable. I’m not even boasting. I’ll treat the cleaner in the café I’m sat outside of now the same way I’ll treat the King of England.”
Madine says he avoids social media today. “I’m sure people that leave these comments are not perfect themselves. They’ve probably had more fall-outs than I have. But I can’t change it. People who know me will know I’m polite and I’ll do anything for anyone.”
Madine said his only flicker of post-retirement regret came when he watched the Sheffield derby last season and imagined himself walking out of the tunnel on such an exciting occasion. “But I’ve made my peace with it. You know in your head you’re not going to get that again. It’s been and it’s gone. I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve met a lot of good people along the way, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes that I want to try and put right in my life.”
The striker emerged as a talented goalscorer at Brunton Park (Image: Stuart Walker)
Madine says the way his career unfolded in recent years hastened his decision. He suffered an ACL injury at Blackpool and continued receiving treatment after the end of his contract. “The physio who rehabbed me was great, but as a club, they’d watch me travel to Blackpool every weekend and I had to buy my own hotel every night, even though they owned the hotel.
“I wasn’t getting paid. It was costing me two grand a month to go and fix my knee that I’d hurt playing for them, so that was a bit of a sickener.”
Madine recovered and joined Hartlepool United, feeling his career was back on track, but was disaffected when, after a productive spell in their side, a club executive only offered him the chance to return and train without the promise of a further deal.
“I was like, ‘I’ve just played for you for a year, and I’ve played for 15 years, three levels above this. And you’re saying you ‘need to have a look at me’?’ I just found it a bit disrespectful for what I’d achieved, and the way I’d moulded into a person that tried to help the younger lads.
“I then went to Spennymoor for two weeks, but I just felt my bubble had burst. I rang the manager and told him I didn’t have the love for it any more, which was never me. Put a football in front of me, even as a 30-odd year old, and I was like a little kid. I’d run and get it and kick it off the crossbar from 30 yards. I got to Spennymoor and I just couldn’t be bothered to train or play. So it was best to walk away.”
Madine says he never thought of clinging on to his career at this stage. “I could have sat and collected a wage all season. But I’m not that type of person. I liked the manager, I liked the owner, the chief executive. They’re all really good people, as were all the lads. They deserved all of me and I couldn’t give them all of me.”
With a year’s reflection, it now feels like his career went by in a flash. “It doesn’t feel like nearly 20 years ago that I went to Carlisle and met Eric [Kinder] for the first time,” Madine says. “I love Eric and still speak to him now. He took me from a young kid, a council estate lad, a little chav, and he managed to help me get away and get to some crazy heights.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do things I can do now without Eric and Carlisle United. I’m able to give my mam things she never had. She’s able to have her holidays and less worry. She’s gone from a single mam sheltering to going on holidays whenever she wants.
“I’m just so grateful to Carlisle. I always found it a family club, where everyone was really close, knew each other’s names. One of my regrets is that I was a really immature person back then – and you probably don’t appreciate things enough when you’re that young, do you?”
Madine says his start in football, with Carlisle’s youth team, “saved me” (Image: STEWART BLAIR)
Madine keeps in touch with several of the older United players who took him under their wing, like Chris Lumsdon and Danny Graham, as well as kitman Andy Horn. “I get the odd Facetime off Joe Garner when he’s had a drink – he’s still daft as a brush.” He is attending former youth team-mate Simon Lakeland’s stag do next year, and also recalls an encounter with his old under-18s strike partner Andy Cook after a Spennymoor game. “He threw my football boots out of the taxi window on the motorway,” he laughs. “Friends for life, and we had some great times. Some stories you won’t be able to print, as well.”
Madine says he has not fully taken stock of his career yet. “When you’re in the moment you just think it’s normal. But when I do sit back, I realise I’ve played 500-odd games, scored 100-odd league goals and had a couple of big-money transfers. I’ve had good managers sign me. Phil Parkinson’s given me new deals. Chris Wilder’s taken me even with the whole Sheffield controversy [between Wednesday and United]. Neil Warnock bought me. People like that don’t sign you if you’re a bad egg. It just tells me that I was probably better than I realised.”
Madine, who had a loan spell back at Carlisle in 2014, says he has not been back to the area for a while but still has close friends in the city – and admits he would have loved a swansong in the blue shirt. “When [coach] Gav Skelton went back to Carlisle after being at Hartlepool, I was half hoping he would pick the phone up. Unfortunately the call never came.
“I would have gone back to Carlisle for free. I owe them my life. I dread to think what I’d be up to if I hadn’t picked up the phone to Eric when I was a young lad.”
Madine is unsure what he might do in the long term. He says the hard lessons he has learned in life could make him a good mentor for young footballers, perhaps through his agent’s business. “But to be honest, I like my peace now. I don’t I don’t like the hustle and bustle of what I used to be like, going out two or three times a week.
“I like quiet. I’ve got a friend who I’ve been to visit a couple of times – he lives abroad and he’s not got loads. He’s got a couple of pairs of shorts and vests, he trains in the morning, goes down to the beach with his dog and lies on his hammock, and that’s pretty much all he does every day.
“I’m getting closer every day to just packing up, selling up and just going, ‘Right, let’s just go and get a hammock’. I don’t need much.”
Former Northern Ireland U21 international Jamie Sendles-White, left, will fight Madine in the boxing ring next week (Image: Niall Carson / PA)
Whether or not he lives out that understated fantasy, Madine will first be back under the spotlight in the boxing ring. During this interview he says he is sporting a black eye amid the tough learning curve of training. “In my first week, I got my head punched all over and thought, ‘What am I doing?’ Then a week later, I had a good week and sparred well. Then the next week I’m rubbish again. You’ve just got to trust the process, trust your coaches.”
Others on next Thursday’s card in London’s Grosvenor House Hotel include Nile Ranger, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Harlee Dean and David Norris. Why does boxing appeal to so many ex-footballers? “I just think we’re all so competitive,” Madine says. “We’re obsessed with winning.
“Every kid in the world wants to be a footballer. I don’t think you get to the Football League and Premier League without having a real winner’s mentality. So it’s the challenge. I don’t want this lad to beat me in a fight. I might joke and say he’s better than me, but I really want to win.”
As he channels his combative nature for a good cause, what will be Madine’s style in the ring? “Oh, there’s no style, mate,” he laughs. “Just swing from your boots, hope for the best, and hopefully put on a show. It might just work.”
For more information on A Night To Remember III click HERE