It turns out that, even 40 years on, there are still Ipswich fans who have not yet stopped Jason Dozzell in the street. He is walking along Portman Road, passing beneath the ageing Cobbold Stand and a display that evokes some of his happiest times, when a grey-haired man diverts from his dog-walking path to instigate conversation. “I was in there when you scored that goal,” he informs Dozzell, who engages as if this is the first time he has heard such recollections. “I just had to tell you. Incredible. Where does the time go?”
That goal. It has followed him everywhere since 4 February 1984 when his smartly hooked finish had the final say in a 3-1 win over Coventry. Dozzell was making his senior debut at 16 years and 57 days old; he became the youngest goalscorer in England’s top flight and it is a record nobody has come particularly close to breaking. He remains a genuine home town hero – the boy who grew up 500 metres from the stadium and watched from the terraces until the moment that changed his life.
Nobody can take the memories away but they came at a cost. “For a few years my career became a prisoner to that goal,” Dozzell says, sitting in the offices of ITFC Foundation, the community arm where he now works with youngsters. “It catapulted me into ‘wonderkid this, wonderkid that’, and I had to deal with it all on my own. I had a talent, but psychologically I probably wasn’t ready.”
The journey towards understanding the roots and later-life consequences of that statement has not been easy but Dozzell has found clarity by working on an autobiography, Follow the Thunder. It will reach shelves on Monday and, in stark detail, outlines the journey of a man who accepts he lost his way.
There was not really anyone on the end of a phone when, after a high-profile move to Tottenham in 1993, the excesses of that era warped his focus. Fortunately there was assistance at hand when, five years ago and more than a decade and a half after retiring, his mental health spiralled devastatingly.
“My body was telling me I was in trouble,” he says of that period when a lifetime’s uncertainties became too much to bear. “I was taking lots of time off, not getting up in the morning, couldn’t get out of bed. Opening a bottle of drink was edgy: my heart was pumping fast for no reason.”
The lowest point came in June 2019 when he was pulled over by police and discovered to have been at the wheel with benzoylecgonine, a compound found in cocaine, in his bloodstream. He was later given a driving ban and fined but what Dozzell needed, far more than anything else, was help. His friend and former teammate, Simon Milton, helped set the wheels in motion for his recovery and, he thinks, prevented him from sliding into an even darker place.
“I’d given up, to be honest,” he says. “It was: ‘Where can I run? Where can I hide?’ But Milts gets things done and there were no questions, it was: ‘Right, you’re going to do this, that and that.’ I’d never been spoken to like that before, didn’t know how to take it, and it was probably what I’d missed in my life.”
Dozzell believes writing his book has been akin to therapy. “When the paper is black, it’s hard to join the dots up,” he says. “But now I’ve gone back over everything, it’s white and I can piece it all together.” His upbringing had a complex backstory but, as he emphasises, was far from unhappy. He and his sister were raised by their mother in a modest house five minutes from the stadium; before sitting down for this interview we recreate part of that walk through Alderman Park, a recreation ground behind Portman Road that stoked two passions. One was playing: learning to use his brain in keeping one step ahead of older boys. Technique was something Dozzell, at any stage of his career, never wanted for. The other was watching: the ground’s gates would open at half-time and he would put the ball down, slipping in to watch Bobby Robson’s team hand out lessons in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “I was mesmerised,” he says.
He had a shyness that lent itself to vulnerability, largely due to experiencing little of the wider world beyond that path between home, park and field of dreams. Dozzell recalls the story, told in the book, of his first call-up to Ipswich’s senior team at that mind-bogglingly young age. He arrived at the stadium and hid in the boiler room, waiting to summon up the courage to walk into a dressing room with players like Paul Mariner and Terry Butcher. It was not a time or place to ask questions or reveal insecurities; domestic life never really felt that way, either.
“In that time, until 16, I’d led a really sheltered existence,” he says. “Then my destiny was pretty much made: I was taken out of school and it was basically: ‘Get on with it by yourself.’ I love my mum to bits, but a dominant male figure in my life would probably have helped.”
He was close to his older half-brother Tony, but the relationship never felt paternal. Tony had his own struggles. “I’d go into the north stand to be with my brother and he was getting terrible racist abuse from away fans,” he says. “It was hard to hear. The National Front were prevalent in those days. They’d follow teams around and the abuse he got … Jesus. That was a big shock for a kid of 12. I started to learn about stuff I never knew about.
“I didn’t really understand my culture. My mum is white, my dad wasn’t about. I lived in a diverse area, there was everything. Then, starting to realise what racism is, I had to find out for myself.”
It was a lot to process further down the line. So was the transfer to Spurs, completed after Dozzell had played more than 400 times for Ipswich and captained them to promotion from Division Two in 1991-92. “At 16 I had walked into a drinking culture, a gambling culture,” he says. “You’re not just going to Spurs, you’re going to the biggest playground in the world. It was chalk and cheese. Going to an environment like that in the 90s was difficult.”
Nowadays clubs have safety nets in place that mean support is available but then there was nobody at hand to call Dozzell before or after games, checking how he was or asking where he would be going that night. It is one of the ways he now tries to help his son Andre, who made his own goalscoring debut at 16 for Ipswich and now plays for Portsmouth. “Doing the book has made me realise I wish I had the little things I’m giving him.” he says. “I just took everything and made every decision on my own. It would sometimes be trial and error. I needed some help dealing with outside distractions.”
Dozzell is sometimes derided by Spurs fans but he says that with almost 100 caps, he never quite faded from the picture. “Tottenham is great now but it was quite a negative arena to play in back then,” he says. “A lot of frustrated people. It was difficult but there were both good times and bad. It was just about trying to challenge myself.”
A lack of structure throughout his life led him, he thinks, to self-sabotage. “I didn’t really get to the middle ground,” he says. “It was a bit chaotic. I’m trying to get to that place and have a calm life but looking back it was very much top of the mountain or bottom of the ocean.”
He hopes his tale, which makes a compelling and at times harrowing read, helps others find a way to address their problems. Dozzell has known family tragedy: two of his nephews died in the space of two years at the start of this decade, one by suicide. His own troubles never led him to the brink but acknowledging them helped him back towards the light.
“If I can help even a couple of people out with this, and they can reach out because of it, then it’s worth doing,” he says. “I’ve already had people, close friends, who’ve read it and told me: ‘I’ve tried to kill myself.’ I’d have never even thought they were in that position.”
Looking out of the window towards the venue he loves, he can now appreciate the joys that have come along the way. There is a good reason why people in Ipswich, where he is adored, still cross the road to hail him. “I’m proud of my career,” he says. “It’s not one of those stories where someone comes through and you don’t see them again. I can’t regret anything; it could have been a lot worse. For a skinny little kid from over the road, playing in the park, I’m proud of it.”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
