An England international and Premier League winner refused to accept his medal, believing he didn’t deserve it and ‘didn’t even like football’
When Blackburn Rovers commemorated their Premiership triumph with a 20-year anniversary bash in 2015, one notable absentee from the Ewood Park festivities was David Batty.
The midfielder had featured sparingly that campaign due to injury woes and notably refused his winner’s medal, believing he hadn’t done enough to warrant the honour. In many respects, Batty was a reluctant footballer. He rarely watched matches, showed little interest in studying the game, and maintained pursuits beyond the beautiful game.
“He was last into training and first away,” Alan Shearer remembered, when discussing the combative star, who turned 56 on Tuesday, December 2. “He used to come in his kit and was already driving away by the time the forwards finished their extra shooting session.
“In terms of loving the game, I’m not sure. But he was a fierce competitor and came back from a serious injury. He was very good on the ball and was an excellent passer.”
Batty arrived at Rovers from his boyhood club Leeds in 1993 and became a vital component in Kenny Dalglish’s squad. A fractured foot sidelined him for most of the title-winning campaign, though he featured when the championship was secured at Anfield, bringing down Steve McManaman for Jamie Redknapp’s dramatic late strike.
Batty, a tenacious competitor on the field, was famous for his composed and unflappable demeanour before matches. His teammates weren’t quite so relaxed.
“I roomed with David Batty the night before and he was just no calming influence whatsoever,” recalled teammate Jeff Kenna. “He was calm as you like – I never saw him rattled at all – but I think he could sense that I was a bit nervous and apprehensive, and he was happy to keep digging at me about how important the game was and so on.”
This mindset proved invaluable during Batty’s playing days. Following his crucial penalty miss for England against Argentina during the 1998 World Cup, he simply shrugged it off. It didn’t affect him or gnaw away at him like it would many others.
“He played football because he was good at it, I don’t think he really liked it that much,” recalled Ian Pearce, Batty’s former teammate at Ewood.
Stories from Batty’s playing career are abundant, from his confrontation with Roberto Mancini during a friendly match and accidentally fracturing teammate Keith Curle’s jaw during Leeds training, to the occasion he disappeared to conduct some amateur detective work whilst at Rovers.
“There was a body found (at Brockhall) when they were knocking houses down,” Pearce recalled. “We were training and Batts was off looking to see if he could find the body and looking at it getting exhumed and wondered what was going on.”
For Batty, football represented employment rather than passion. But this doesn’t suggest he lacked commitment – anyone watching him play could witness his combative and hardworking nature in midfield.
One of his last appearances for Rovers came in that notorious Champions League clash in Russia against Spartak Moscow where he and teammate Graeme Le Saux exchanged punches. The duo had collided whilst Rovers were in possession and, following heated words, Le Saux launched a swing at Batty.
“Hitting him was more of a pre-emptive strike than anything. If I had not hit him, I felt he was going to hit me,” Le Saux revealed in his autobiography about the incident.
However, true to Batty’s character, once the evening had concluded, the confrontation was put to bed. “I apologised to David after the game in the dressing-room in front of our team-mates, then I sat with him in the airport lounge and we talked about it,” Le Saux explained.
“He was absolutely fine, absolutely calm. He told me not to worry.”
Batty’s career featured two league championships, 42 England caps and a Champions League semi-final appearance during his second stint at Elland Road. He hung up his boots in 2004 and has avoided the spotlight.