Steven Caulker reveals Dundee gave him his love for football back ... even if his "mental" stint in Scotland saw his captain order him to get "f****** smashed" from the table at Pizza Express.
The towering defender's short stint in Tayside got his career back on track after falling off the radar at QPR and five years on he's playing regularly for Wigan Athletic. Caulker, who admits he once refused to play at Southampton because he was too embarrassed, says his spell in the SPFL was a much-needed reality check.
His time there left Neil McCann on his knees after going through three captains in three weeks thanks to off-pitch antics, though they did eventually stave off relegation and finish ninth in the league. Caulker only wore the armband for one game; he claims it was stripped from the previous skipper for giving an over-exuberant team talk on the table at dinner, before he lost it himself for setting off the fire alarm in a Dundee hotel.
Playing beside Paul McGowan, who wore an ankle tag which prevented him from playing in certain away games, was "the icing on the cake" for the former Tottenham star. Despite the chaos though, he only had good things to say.
Speaking on the Undr The Cosh podcast, he said: "My options were limited (before signing). I had one or two snippets in China but I wasn't ready for something like that, I wanted some kind of normality.
"It was far from it! It was insane. Incredibly good, I really, really enjoyed it, but my God. I felt so normal there. I was looking around and thinking 'If I'm f******, he's f****** as well. One of the boys, he's playing on tag, he can't play away games. This is great, I love it.
"That's the icing on the cake, playing on tag. That sets the bar there."
Caulker was captain for one game against Rangers and he says it was stripped from the last skipper for ordering the team to get "f****** smashed" on the table at Pizza Express. He didn't name names although Cammy Kerr and Darren O'Dea had shared the armband in the weeks prior..
He went on: "It was mental (at Dundee). There was one guy, he was the captain. He got on the table at Pizza Express and said, 'I don't give a f*** what the gaffer says, we're f****** getting on it today boys, we're getting f***** smashed!
"That's gone back to the gaffer, he's taken the armband off him, gives the armband to me and it didn't take long for the armband to be off me. I was setting off fire alarms at some hotel in Dundee after some mad night out.
"The next guy, he's arrested and put on tag. So it's gone through three people, and the gaffer's like 'I don't know what to do any more’.
"We kept them up though, we went in with a job to do and kept them up. The boys were so together, we had a couple of good players like Glen Kamara who's gone on to do well at Rangers. We had good players but it was just the togetherness. We'd go to the stadium, jump in a mini-bus, we're driving the mini-bus to get to training. I didn't have a license at the time ... but the banter was great. I got my love for (football) back."
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