Billy Kenny does not mind being a cautionary tale.
For years he has been the bad example, the horror story told as a warning to up-and-coming stars to show that realising their full potential is not inevitable. Whenever a Wayne Rooney or a Ross Barkley or an Anthony Gordon - or even a Steven Gerrard or a Trent Alexander-Arnold - has been on the cusp of breaking into one of this city's first teams, Billy is the case study of how things can still go wrong.
Billy is not just fine with this. He wants his story to be told. Even more so now that, after losing two decades of his life to cocaine and alcohol, he is sober to tell it.
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For Billy, the hope is his experiences can have an impact. At 19 he lived his dream, starring for his beloved Everton in a Merseyside derby win. By 21 a toxic combination of injury, addiction and what he now knows to have been depression forced his retirement. After years living as an urban myth of football downfalls he has turned his life around and has an understanding of what went wrong. With this new-found perspective he hopes he can make a difference - whether that be in schools or football academies or both.
“I’ve got a great story,” Billy tells the ECHO. “I’ll put the derby game on for them and say two years later from that game, because I had been a naughty boy, I ended up on drink and drugs and in rehab thinking my life was over. It is something that I am passionate about and I want to do. I’m ready. I’ll tell these kids and if I can save a couple of them I will… I’m drug free now, I’m alcohol free and I am ready to go into schools.”
Billy had this opportunity once before, he says, revealing the Football Association sought him out for such a role just over 20 years ago. As overwhelmed as he was by his vices he at least had an awareness he was unsuitable while addiction controlled him. During those grim years, Billy became the template warning for every young player growing up in the city. That did not trouble him then. Now, he wants to take ownership of his story.
He said: “It didn’t really bother me to be honest. If they can listen and people are talking about me like that then they have got to take something from it and if they do not they are fools. It doesn’t bother me at all. You need examples - you need good examples and bad examples, bad examples to learn off. I was a good example in the beginning and then turned bad. I’ve been good and bad so I’m the best to learn from.”
Billy has come a long way since the death of his mum, Bella, finally gave him the inspiration to get clean. He still recalls the night of her wake, looking around the Anfield venue and deciding enough was enough. He has no explanation for where the discipline came from other than it being Bella’s strength finally reaching the part of his mind that was still capable of pulling him back to sobriety. Now he is a different person and to walk around Burlington Street, heading towards Scotland Road and up the hill that was once his nemesis as he fought to keep a ball off the ground for its full distance, is an experience. Everyone knows Billy. Everyone wants to talk to him. Everyone is happy to see him smiling.
In the early days of lockdown Billy was in Spain with time on his hands. He opened a notepad and started scribbling. The intention was to release himself of the demons that had tortured him since his pinnacle. His penmanship eventually filled three notebooks that tell his story. Raw, emotional, the writing offers an insight into the depths of his turmoil. It started as a private act of catharsis. He thought: “I’m just going to get it down, just to get it off my own chest. Whether it turns out to be on the bookshelves or not is another matter. I’m not bothered about that. I was just writing it down.”
Whether it reaches bookshelves or not is for the future to decide but those notepads ended up in the hands of writer Ian Salmon, who has now turned Billy’s story into a stage play. It is Billy’s opening foray into taking control of his own cautionary tale. ‘What happened to Billy Kenny’ will hit the stage of Liverpool’s Royal Court next month, with Billy played by Jay Johnson, whose credits include Little Boy Blue, the ITV drama centred on the murder of Rhys Jones, and the Stephen Graham film Boiling Point. Both Ian and Jay feel an enormous sense of responsibility to the story they are tasked with telling - not just because of the subject matter but also because, like Billy, they all come from similar north Liverpool backgrounds.
Ian, whose previous work includes Girls Don’t Play Guitars, The Comeback Special and Those Two Weeks, explained: “It’s a privilege to tell Billy’s story and to tell it as he told it to us. Billy’s real drinking starts with depression. Once injury hits and he is out of the game for a year, he is depressed, and nobody knew what depression was in 1992, nobody in football was talking about depression. Billy basically had an 18-month long career. He was the man of the match in the derby on a YTS contract and we know of people within the game who have been asked who the best young player they had played with was, was it Wayne Rooney, was it Steven Gerrard, and the answer is no, it was Billy Kenny.
“So we know the level Billy had, he was this lad with great ability who came from nothing and then when he hit something that was unexpected the specific help he needed was not there, it did not exist at the time. Billy says people think being a footballer is easy. It is not. You have to give up so much and he did that for years. For eight, nine years of his life he gave up everything with the idea of being *that* player and this is about: ‘What do you do when your dream comes true?’. His dream was to beat Liverpool in the derby. And then he did that at 19. What is the rest of your life after that? This is the rest of Billy’s life after that and to be able to tell that story is a privilege and it is important, it is a cautionary tale, the play is a cautionary tale because, as Billy says at the end, that could be you.”
That addiction knows no boundaries is a crucial message for Billy, whose downfall started when he reached his peak. He said: “Before I started drinking I had no confidence. Even though I was playing for Everton I had no confidence to go to the bar and talk to a girl. In the early days the alcohol gave me a lot of confidence and I liked that bit about it. Because where I came from, growing up on Burly, I had holes in my shoes, I looked like Tom Sawyer growing up, I had no confidence. I was heavy and fat and then the weight come off [and his career took off]. It doesn’t matter who you are or how good you are or how much you have got, if you like alcohol and it gives you what you think are missing in your mind it could get you.”
Jay, who grew up in Anfield, feels the same way and is hopeful his first time back on stage in more than a decade will encourage people who are struggling to seek support. He said: “I am a red, Ian is a red, the director is a red, Billy is a blue. Mental health doesn’t have any colours. It doesn’t go by class, it doesn’t go by anything, age, race… I know addiction well from various people around me and that is the hardest part - to get yourself back. Anyone who can do that deserves maximum respect - more than any respect you could get on a football pitch.
“Sorting out what is going on inside, managing it and dealing with it, getting yourself back to a place where you can hold your head up and get on with life, that is more than winning any football game in my opinion. That is the message we need to get out there. There are so many people who are struggling and learning how to cope is massive. I think that is what we need to show. It is spoken about more nowadays but you only have to look at the number of young men who are taking their lives and I think stories like Billy’s can only help to break the stigma of seeking help.”
Now 49, Billy is enjoying what he calls “a second crack” at life. Asked what advice he would give to his former self, he said: “Choose your mates carefully. Don’t follow your peers. Do what your own mind is telling you. Don’t feel pressured into doing what other people are doing. It’s important to stay close with your own family and definitely, definitely stay away from alcohol because it leads to other things. And when you are a bit of a football player and you go out to town, they are waiting for you. People are waiting for you. I got it, although I’m a Scouser and I got more love, I still got bits of trouble because I was a football player. And the booze, if you want to be a professional footballer or a professional athlete, which I was at the beginning, don’t drink.”
*Whatever happened to Billy Kenny will run from April 18-22 at the Royal Court. For more information, visit the theatre's website.
You can find out about alcohol and drug support services in your area on the NHS website.
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