Exclusive Interview: Jordan Rhodes

Interest from Premier League clubs, twenty seven League One goals by early January, a Scotland cap, and a girlfriend who goes to Warwick University! It could be fair to say Jordan Rhodes has got a lot going for him. Even before scoring five away goals against Wycombe last Friday, the Huddersfield Town striker was attracting attention from the likes of Manchester United (with Spurs among eight top-flight sides scouting him at Wycombe) for his match-winning performances for ‘the Terriers.’

The Boar’s **John Downes** catches up with the striker to discuss his unorthodox upbringing, the speculation surrounding him and his superstitious tendencies.

**Firstly congratulations on making your Scotland debut against Cyprus in November, it must have been a proud moment for you and your family?**

Yeah very much so! It’s something that I’ve dreamed about doing ever since I was a young lad. I never thought for one minute that it would happen at any stage in my career. To do it only six months since playing for the Under-21s came as a complete shock and something that hasn’t registered or settled in just yet. It’ll take a few years to do so.

**Good stuff. I believe you stayed at Westwood Halls of residence as an academy player at Ipswich. What tournament was that and how did you find living as a student for a few days?**

Yeah that was the Nike Cup, I think it must have been 2005. I got to the final with Ipswich but unfortunately got beat by Arsenal but for that week it was a fantastic. I was very impressed with the facilities back then and it never occurred to me that I’d be back five or six years later following Emma (his girlfriend) about and coming to visit her. I was impressed with it then and there’s new additions being built all the time, so it’s even better now.

**So now you’ve visited Jack Martin on campus and Leamington as well, what do you think of the two places?**

Yeah, very nice, very impressed! I’d been to a couple of universities before I came to Warwick and none that really measure up to the type of new facilities at Warwick. I’m sure everyone will know because they’ve visited plenty of universities themselves but it’s really good to come here. There’s plenty of things to do and places to go and eat and what have you.

**You know Warwick first XI player Joe Bloomfield from your Ipswich days. What do you make of him as a player?**

I know Joe and his family well. I know his brother (Matt) too, who plays for Wycombe – I’ve played against him a number of times. I remember Matt playing for England Under-17s and Under-19s, him and Darren Bent were the same age and went through all the age groups. He used to come and watch on Sunday mornings when we used to play, and it used to be like ‘Joe’s brother Matt Bloomfield’s here!’ Joe was a really good player and someone with tremendous athletic ability, covering box-to-box as a centre-midfielder. I think he still plays centre-midfield now and other than being a good footballer, he’s an even nicer lad. I still keep in contact with Joe and it’d be great to see him and have a catch-up.

**Can you tell the readers how you started off in football and the clubs you’ve been at previous to your current team, Huddersfield Town FC?**

My dad was a footballer so I used to travel around both England and Scotland following him about. It’s a side of football some people don’t really register; it can be a little bit unsettling at times. I’ve had seven or eight different schools and I’ve never really got settled in an area. But that part of my life has prepared me for my professional career. I spent the first 10 years of my life in Scotland before moving to Barnsley academy which I stayed at until I was 15 years old.

Ipswich academy then bought me from Barnsley, after my dad too moved from Barnsley to be Ipswich’s goalkeeping coach. So as we did, I followed him down with my mum, brothers and sisters. I started and finished school in Ipswich then went on to do the youth team with Ipswich Under-18s. I had a couple of loan spells, after I never made a first-team start for Ipswich, going to Oxford when I was 17, then at the start of the 2008-2009 season went on loan to Rochdale, then into the New Year went on a six-month loan spell to Brentford where I played a few games. Off the back of that loan spell I got a move to Huddersfield, which was fantastic.

**You mentioned being at Barnsley for a while… Barnsley’s in south Yorkshire, Huddersfield’s in west Yorkshire but nevertheless what’s it like being back in the county?**

Yeah, it’s great. It’s a very big place and it takes a while getting from one end to the other but all my family are based in Yorkshire. To move as a 19 year-old on your own, from your parent’s home in Ipswich was tough mentally at times, although you have to do it at some point, but having family 20 minutes away, locally in Barnsley is always reassuring.

**It’s very common for players such as yourself to move around the lower league clubs these days. How has that developed you as a person and a player?**

Very much so, going through the youth teams it’s all about developing, it’s not a matter of who wins at the end of the day. It’s about how you play as a team and what as an individual you can focus on, so going on loan to those clubs was fascinating and gave a real insight. Seeing players going out on a Saturday afternoon playing for their families, trying to put food on the table was something that I’d never really experienced.

Even playing at 3pm was weird because I never played at that time before but by 5pm you want to see where you are in the league, you get bonuses, you want to do well for your family, and you want to keep progressing your career to get yourself a better life. It was just so fascinating to see the hunger the players had going out, to exceed in life. When you come off in a youth team match and you’ve lost, it’s not so much of a big deal, so taking away those types of experiences was a big deal and I’m better for it as a person and player, I think.

**Talking of growing up, you wanted to be like your father I imagine but what other players did you look up to and think, ‘I want to be like him’?**

I spent a lot of time growing up in Scotland so I was a real admirer of Henrik Larsson and I also liked watching Ally McCoist. He was such a natural finisher, and a tremendous character in Scotland. But coming down the road, I was always watching goalscorers like Alan Shearer and Ruud van Nistelrooy on “Match of the Day”.

**The next couple of questions are a bit sensationalist, I apologise, but as you know you’re already becoming a bit of a journeyman so if a big Premier League club came in for you, would you be willing to leave Huddersfield?**

I don’t know, I’m not sure whether that would come along, there’s a little bit of speculation at the moment but that’s not for me to comment on and things like that will get written. If it’s not about me, it’ll be about somebody else, so it’s just about focusing on now and trying to do well in training up to the next game and the game itself.

**A couple of teams I’ve heard banded about are West Ham, Manchester United and your boyhood team Celtic but is it all about trying to gain promotion to the Championship with Huddersfield then at the moment?**

Yeah, absolutely. I doubt there’ll be any truth in those stories whatsoever, that’s just the speculation but I’ll be looking to get out of the division with Huddersfield. We’ve been unlucky these last couple of years. We got into the play-offs, and then the play-off final last year, it’s a progression, so hopefully we can go one better than the play-off final, miss that out, and go up automatically this year.

**Well I think everyone would agree that the speculation has been justified; you’ve been hitting hat-tricks left, right, and centre, scoring nearly every weekend, international call-ups, what’s it like to have the world at your feet at the moment?**

I don’t really know! I’ve not really changed anything. I’ve just tried to be hard-working, take everything on board and trying to learn everything I can at the moment. The experience with Scotland was fantastic. I learnt a great deal sitting in the room with the likes of Darren Fletcher, Charlie Adam, Allan McGregor, James Morrison, Phil Bardsley, who are Premiership players with big personalities and train with international-class footballers. Watching how they go about their business, with the stature they have, on a day-to-day basis, was fascinating and something that one-day I’d love to emulate.

**Well aside from just scoring goals, you’ve also been breaking records. I believe you scored the fastest ever headed hat-trick a couple of years ago against Exeter (in 8 minutes) and you’re the Scotland Under-21 joint top-scorer of all time. Do these achievements mean anything to you, or are they just nice to have?**

I don’t really notice them to be honest! It’s normally my granddad who notices them, when I go to the pub, saying by the way you’ve done such and such. But when I come off the field at 5 o’clock, I just try to analyse the things I’ve done right and wrong, and then focus on the next game. You can’t influence the past, so I just knuckle down and think about the next game.

**Now that you’ve played for Scotland you’ve played with some really top-draw players, so who do you rate as the best player you’ve played with and which people do you look up to?**

Probably Darren Fletcher just because when you see his CV, he’s won a Champions League medal, numerous Premier League titles, FA Cups, League Cups, many international caps and is captain for his country. He’s probably the one I’d look up to at this moment in time. I’m really good family friends with Joe Royle who took my dad down to Ipswich as goalkeeper coach and like myself, he was a number 9 striker back in the day. He took me under his wing so he’s someone I would look up to, too, as a role model. He’s not quite a manager at this moment in time but may well be again in the future.

**This is very hypothetical but what would you’ve been if you weren’t a footballer, do you think?**

I’m not sure because I’ve always wanted to be a footballer ever since seeing my dad run out onto the field. I’ve always had the ambition of playing on a football pitch in front of fans and being paid for what I love doing. So I think it would be something involved with sport, maybe teaching but I just can’t imagine life without football in it.

**I hear you’ve got quite a few superstitions, care to share them?**

It gets too much at times! I start beating myself up because if I score one week, then the week after, I try to think two weeks back, so it does my head in, John! I make myself eat the same food, do the same preparation like what time I go to bed, what clothes I wear on a Friday, the way I put on my boots, shinpads. So literally everything to anything starts going through my head and I begin to replicate rather than just being relaxed which I don’t think is particularly good but it’s the way things are. I’m a bit weird in this way!

**I’m trying to get into your head now because as you’ve just indirectly admitted, footballers aren’t normal human beings! How hard are the sacrifices you have to make such as not being able to indulge in food and drink, as we do as students, and see your girlfriend here at Warwick as much? Would you say they’re they worth it in the long run?**

I think they are, yeah. You have to make your sacrifices from the adolescence stage at 14, 15 when the kids were starting to go out and have an interest in alcohol and partying. You have to take a step back from that and realise you can’t go long down that line otherwise it’d be a long road ahead so I very much stayed away from it. But as I said before, going around having seven or eight schools and not getting too attached to certain friends and groups was probably better for me in keeping discipline. I try to eat the best I can, that’s another one of my superstitions. I hate it when I eat badly because I feel terrible after it and feel I have to do something to burn it off. But I’ve never touched a drop of alcohol, or cigarettes but I’ve never known anything different, so I’m quite happy with it.

**That’s very admirable, I’m sure after a few nights out here some students wished they’d taken the same road as you! Finally, what advice would you give to those at Warwick who still feel they’ve got a shot at following their passion for the game?**

I’d just say hard-work and knuckling down and never giving up in life. I was never the best player coming up through the youth ranks at Barnsley or in my Sunday league team but you keep working hard, digging away and hopefully that will take you somewhere. I know Emma lives with Sam Longden so a special mention to him. He’s a good person and a good player as well, I hear, who got his first goal before Christmas, so I’m very happy for him!

**That’s it, thanks very much Jordan and good luck for the rest of the season, whoever it may be with!**

Brilliant, thanks John.

**Quickfire: Favourites**

1) Food: Sunday Dinner

2) Current Song: Professor Green feat. Emeli Sandé – Read All About It

3) Non-sporting icon: Nelson Mandela

4) Film: Dumb and Dumber

5) Colour: Blue

6) Football team: Celtic

7) Animal: Dog