BBC SPORT | Football | Gazza turns to Black arts



By David Walmsley BBC Sport Online

Gascoigne has not played professionally this season

Paul Gascoigne's fields of dreams were once those on which World Cups were won and lost.

Today, the school fields and non-league football grounds of Northumberland have to suffice as he chases the Premiership rainbow one final time.

Gascoigne's increasingly painful attempts to pick up the last remaining threads of his frayed career have brought him home to the North East.

Specifically, they have brought him to the door of maverick fitness coach Steve Black and seven-day-a-week training on the turf of Morpeth Town FC and a nearby school.

Gascoigne hits comeback trail

Black, an ex-powerlifter who has worked with Newcastle United and Sunderland, has earned a reputation for unorthodox training techniques.

The big-bearded Geordie works as much on mental conditioning as physical preparation.

He needs to be loved and he needs to be monitored

Steve Black on
Paul Gascoigne

Gascoigne, who has endured a troubled off-field life in recent years, appears to have come to the right man.

"He came to me not in a shocking condition but certainly he wasn't very well," Black says of their first meeting.

"He had been under the weather and seemed to be at a fairly low ebb.

"Of course I had preconceptions," he admits. "But for all the stuff I'd read about, for the last three weeks what I have seen is a dedicated professional athlete."

Black's initial aim was to get Gascoigne fit enough to survive professional club training without "getting stressed" and feeling the urge to go AWOL.

He has now moved on to giving him the means to rekindle the skills that made him such a shining talent a decade ago.

Fitness coach Steve Black
Black worked with the British Lions in 2001
"We've been working on getting his physical condition right, making him feel better about himself and getting his mind focused into match-mode," Black says.

"We have looked at tape after tape after tape of him playing and tried to get back his wonderful change of pace.

"We have been trying to rebuild the muscles that gave him that.

"Then we've been getting him into a soccer situation, bursting past players, getting him playing box to box."

Black has worked on Gascoigne's "thigh and backside" muscles to help him hold opponents off.

He has used boxing techniques to build his upper body and sharpen his footwork, and swimming pools for resistance running.

Waddle warns Gazza

The Newcastle Falcons rugby union team fitness coach believes Gascoigne has responded and that his frame of mind has improved with his conditioning.

"The penny seems to have dropped for this lad," he says.

Paul Gascoigne has endured troubled times off the field
Black found Gascoigne "at a low ebb"
"You may say it's taken a while - and, yes, it has - but it does seem to have dropped and I think he deserves a chance.

"An opportunity is what he's looking for and if he's given the chance he can deliver, he can repay that courage.

"I am absolutely positive that he can play in the Premier League for another two years.

"He needs to be loved, he needs to be trained every day and he needs to be monitored, but he is not the first player to need all that.

"I would be prepared to endorse his return to club training next Monday," Black insists.

"I deeply believe this lad is an exceptional sportsman - still."


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