Fast dreams fade away to a slow, cold reality

He remembers the first day well. Getting off at Manchester airport with his pal Colin Murdock. No-one there to pick them up, they got a taxi. "Could you take us to The Cliff please, we're going on trial with Manchester United." It was Easter 1988, he was 13. Next month he will be 26. Half a lifetime away.

Keith Gillespie sat in a quiet corner of a Manchester hotel and reflected on the story that has brought him to where he is now. Now involves a lot of sitting around. Trying not to reflect. Manchester United play Aston Villa this afternoon, but Gillespie will not be there. Newcastle United play at Elland Road but he will not be there either. Tomorrow lunchtime, Blackburn Rovers, the club Gillespie is contracted to but for whom he no longer plays, meet Birmingham City. He will not be at St Andrews.

Instead Gillespie will go for a run. He will not play football. He might have a pint, maybe a bet, too - more of which later. On Monday morning he will re-join the reserves. The training does not involve treading water, but that's what it is. Half a lifetime ago the fast dreams of playground children did not encompass this slow professional reality.

The saddening, for some maddening, conclusion to come to is that Keith Gillespie's career has stalled. It is 22 weeks since he last started a match for Blackburn - against Rochdale in the League Cup - and it seems not even an outbreak of foot and mouth disease at Ewood Park would earn him a recall from Graeme Souness. There has been no great fall-out between the two according to Gillespie, no training ground `incident', he was just informed one day during the summer that he was no longer wanted and that he was available on a free transfer.

"From what I hear the board wasn't too happy about it," Gillespie explained, "but they're not going to go against the manager. He called me in and said he didn't think I'd done enough since I'd been at the club. The way I see it is that he put me on the list in the summer - after seeing me play just three games at the end of last season. Obviously I feel I've not had a fair crack. I don't know, it's strange. The boys are, like, `what's going on?"'

For once in Gillespie's tumultuous life the answer is not a lot. He went to Wigan Athletic on loan recently, played seven games, got himself fit and returned to Blackburn. He's waiting on the telephone to ring, but there have been no calls from the Premiership and Blackburn are one of the few clubs in the Football League who can afford his wages. He's thinking about going abroad now. There has been interest from Sporting Lisbon in Portugal and from Anderlecht in Belgium, but nothing definite as yet.

So the alternative is to sit and wait, keep time in the reserves. Frustrating it may be, but the frustration is alleviated somewhat by the salary of close to £20,000 per week. That's £1 million a year. Contracted to Blackburn until June 2003, Gillespie could move nowhere and still have collected £5 million in wages from Rovers. Any sympathy for his current circumstance needs to be measured.

"Aye, you could do," he replied sarcastically when early retirement was suggested. Then, more serious, he added: "But it's not about the money. It's nice, obviously, and I wouldn't say it wasn't, but it's no good to me sitting at Blackburn week in, week out just picking up my wages. I want to be playing."

To another suggestion - that he is a waster and is responsible for his situation - he said: "A lot of people might think that because of the way things have gone at Blackburn, but I had four years at Newcastle and for three of them I thought I did well. The last one I had injury problems. Since being at Blackburn I have had injuries again, there's been a change of manager and since he's come in I haven't had a chance. So, as far as justifying myself at Blackburn, I don't think I've been given a fair crack of the whip."

It's a difference of perspective between player and manager. Other managers have looked at him differently. Alex Ferguson for one. It was Ferguson, not an underling, who called Gillespie into his office to inform the Bangor Grammar schoolboy that he would be joining United on his 14th birthday. Ferguson clearly saw something, and Gillespie was part of that first Giggs-Scholes-Neville crop of United youngsters. They won the FA Youth Cup, re-awakened the club's relationship with its youthful past. Steve Bruce labelled them the Dream Team.

Ferguson was later to write that he "didn't honestly feel Keith was top-drawer". But Ferguson didn't tell Kevin Keegan that when he swapped Gillespie and £6 million for Andy Cole this week five years ago. After Gillespie started brightly at St James' Park, while Cole laboured at Old Trafford, the joke was that Ferguson was ready to swap Cole and £6 million for Gillespie.

"I was disappointed, really disappointed," said Gillespie of Keegan's departure two year's later. "He'd done so much to help me. The season we were top of the league I was playing the best football of my career." Does he think about that 12-point lead now? "Oh, yes. Of course."

In came Kenny Dalglish and Gillespie was playing Champions League football. "I liked him. He wasn't the same as Keegan but I had a lot of respect for him. When the club tried to sell me to Middlesbrough he wasn't happy with what had been done. I phoned him up to say: `I've got bad news, I failed the medical,' he said: `It's not bad news for us. Get yourself fit."'

When Gillespie failed that medical at Middlesbrough the Newcastle chief executive told a newspaper that the then 23-year-old's career was finished. Not long after, with Gillespie fit and playing for a Newcastle side now managed by Ruud Gullit, Newcastle sold him for £2-1/4 million to Blackburn Rovers. Gillespie broke a toe in his last Newcastle match but Brian Kidd still bought him anyway.

That was December 1998 and after a successful start at Ewood, Kidd was beginning to struggle. Gillespie, Kidd remembered from their Old Trafford days together. Five months later both went out of the Premiership for the first time. Relegation came against Manchester United. Gillespie played regularly for Kidd. He was painted as one of those who had let Kidd down when Kidd was sacked. In March last year Souness came in and may well have shared the same perspective as the painters.

Perspective matters. It also informs everyday opinion of Gillespie. For each person who recalls him destroying the Spanish international full-back Sergi the night Newcastle beat a Barcelona team containing Figo and Rivaldo, there is another who remembers scuffles in Newcastle city centre, spilt blood on Dawson Street in Dublin after a punch from Alan Shearer and, of course, the £62,000 spent on the horses in one losing week on Tyneside.

It all helped established a wildchild reputation for Gillespie. There was some substance to it. Attached to Newcastle United is a dubious group of gangster/hooligans known as The Gremlins. They tend to pop up in the same bars as Newcastle players. It was one of this mob who accused Gillespie of not enjoying Newcastle's 5-0 win over Manchester United. He attacked Gillespie. Gillespie smacked him. Bouncers intervened. So did the front pages.

Shearer also hit him. "We were both drunk. We exchanged words or whatever. But there was nothing in it afterwards. When I came back from the hospital Al was the first person who came to see me. We joke about it now." Gillespie has been back to the same Dublin pub. "I was looking for the blood by the plant pot where I hit my head."

Gillespie laughs at these memories. He is good company, easy to like. But part of that makes people worry about him, about where he is going. People like Sammy McIlroy, Gillespie's Northern Ireland manager. In his present situation especially, Gillespie has a surplus of time.

He is still gambling. "Not," he said, "on as big a scale," but he bets more in a day than most earn in a week. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he doesn't. But it's hard to spend £20,000 a week on yankees and this is this footballer's financial world. It must possess a very fine perspective.

He's fully aware they are paid stupid money. Some might argue it's money to be stupid with. Gillespie might say he is investing.

And now he has cleared a hurdle in racing terms by buying a quarter of a horse. From bookies to owners' stand. Pedigree. Matt Jansen of Blackburn also has a quarter, and two friends in Belfast. It's called Jurado's Honour, is trained by Dessie Hughes at the Curragh and will have its first run soon. Gillespie has been over to see the horse. "It's a big thrill, it's an interest as well."

But it is not the main interest, should not be. It needs to come from others, and other clubs, but also from Gillespie himself. He has not played a league game since April Fool's Day last year. Half his football lifetime has disappeared. In another half lifetime he best not have regrets.