Well documented and well rehearsed, Tony Adams has been through this line of questioning for some time. Three decades, in fact. It was the summer of 1996 – a home European Championships – when the then England captain reached rock bottom. After an excruciating penalty shootout exit against Germany, the talismanic centre-back embarked on a ghastly 44-day bender, mixing brandy with Guinness to avoid consistent vomiting. By August, aged 29, his alcohol addiction had gone too far.
“I felt so lonely and so desperate,” Adams recalls, now 30 years sober. “I was blacking out and it got into my psyche. I had this mask on, so no one saw it, but underneath I was dying. Everything had stopped working: the football, the drink. I felt scared, in terror, and I just didn’t want to be here. I had a moment where I broke down and cried – and that was a moment of clarity.”
Adams, refreshingly forthright and candid, speaks powerfully in adding: “I was stuck at that point of no return. We called it the ‘jumping-off point’ in [Alcoholics] Anonymous. I couldn’t work, my family had gone, and everything had collapsed. So fast forward 30 years, to now running around smiling at people on Sunday… that’s very special.”
Sixty-six England caps; 672 Arsenal appearances; 13 trophies. It’s quite the footballing haul. Now, four years on from his memorable two-month stint on Strictly Come Dancing, Adams is embarking on another mighty adventure in his 60th year. On Sunday, he will run the London Marathon, battling all the creaking of a metal knee in the process.
A larger-than-life figure in public, Adams will run for The Forward Trust, a charity he has chaired for 18 months, which helps people break the cycles of addiction, crime and unemployment. And he is keen to stress that, even on a day where the capital comes alive with annual fervour and exuberance from all corners, you never know what’s going on deep within.
“Even in a marathon with 50,000 people running, you never know who’s struggling,” he says. “I used to sit in rehab and try to guess who would ‘get it’. I was always wrong. Addiction is insidious; it’s buried inside. You can’t tell what someone is going through just by looking at them.
“Our charity is about real change. We’ve helped 1,000 people into employment last year and 35,000 people in total. Charities everywhere are struggling and we’re not a very ‘sexy’ charity. Alcohol and drug abuse are not high on the agenda. There’s no real funding for rehabilitation – but we’re trying to provide it.”
Beyond bygone stories of Arsenal’s infamous “Tuesday Club” of the 1990s, where the likes of Adams, Paul Merson, Ray Parlour and Lee Dixon embarked on heavy drinking sessions, Adams’s personal journey with sobriety reached a rather heart-rending chapter two years ago when his son Oliver, now 34, revealed the booze had taken hold of him too.
“When my son came to me and said, ‘I’m done, Dad’, I knew what I had to do,” Adams says. “That’s the difference compared to 30 years ago, when I reached out. Now, I know the solution. I can pass it on and he can pass it on to others. That’s why I do Chance [Adams founded the Sporting Chance Clinic in 2000, which provides addiction and mental health support for athletes] and The Forward Trust. It’s getting people to the right help.”
Now, Adams seems in arguably the best place he’s ever been. Or as he describes it, three days out from “plodding” around 26 miles, “life is pretty wonderful.” He has taken a “less is more” approach to training, having not completed a training run longer than 10 miles. Are alarm bells ringing? Not quite – Adams has been through this stage of anticipation before.
“I’m quite calm, I’m used to big events,” he says. “It’s not like Strictly – mentally, that was really tough. This will be a bit of fun, but you’ve got to be careful not to get carried away with the moment.
“My first trophy [the League Cup] was against Liverpool in 1987, but I was a young 21-year-old running around trying to win the game on my own. I left a big hole behind me and Ian Rush scored. That taught me a valuable lesson.”
Although insisting he is “not competitive”, Adams can’t help but mention the marathon time of John Terry – another former England centre-back captain, though 14 years younger – who clocked in at just over five hours last year. Adams is more conservative – “probably under six hours” – yet the Gunners legend does not need an invitation for a gentle jab at his London rivals.
“In my last game, in 2002 against Chelsea, I just did my job,” he says. “I got through the match, we won 2-0 and lifted another double. I’m approaching the marathon in the same way. I’m not going to run 26 miles in the first mile.
“I’ve been very lucky and won a lot in my career, but finishing the marathon would be equal to any achievement. This is personal, I’m on my own out there, but there’s a different responsibility to this one.”