Call Yourself A Fan?: James Collins discusses Gabby Agbonlahor’s training ground trick

Aston Villa and West Ham defender James Collins revealed that since retiring from football in 2020 he started playing 7-a-side at a very unexpected location – Rod Stewart’s house, whilst on the panel of quiz show series ‘Call Yourself A Fan’, sponsored by Coral.

I didn’t play football for a long time since retiring, but I’ve just recently got into a bit of 7-a-side randomly. I play at Rod Stewart’s house! It’s a mixture of ex-players—Jake Livermore and Billy Wingrove, the YouTuber, set it up. Alistair, who’s Rod’s son and is close to us, is also involved; he’s got a team that plays us ex-legends. I mean, I’m a boy from Newport in South Wales that’s very proud of my career, but I never thought I’d be playing football at Rod Stewart’s house!

Collins also recalled his time at Aston Villa under manager Martin O’Neill, and shared a story from when he and Richard Dunne first signed for the club:

“Martin (O’Neill) kept it very simple for the players. Me and Richard Dunne had signed on deadline day, and on the Sunday we had the Birmingham derby. So we’ve gone into the meeting with Martin before the game and he’s asked, ‘Any questions?’ So Big Dunne has gone, ‘Yeah boss, we’re both centre-halves; what are we doing from corners and set-plays?’ He (Martin) went, ‘Well, what we’ll do is… I signed you two big f****rs to head it, so why don’t you just stand in the middle of the box and head it?’ That was his tactical genius. Everything he did was great. We were always up in the Champions League spots; we got to the League Cup final, the FA Cup semi-final. It was a great time at a great club.”

The ex-Wales international also named Gabby Agbonlahor as the biggest joker in the Aston Villa squad and told a story about training under Gerard Houllier:

“Gabby Agbonlahor, being a Birmingham lad, was a bit of a legend at Villa. He was always in amongst it. There was a great story where Martin (O’Neill) had left and Gerard Houllier came in as manager. It didn’t quite go too well for Gerard, but every Sunday—win, lose, or draw—you’d come in, and this fitness coach would have us doing six laps of the pitch. Gabby, being Gabby, has clocked that on the far side of Bodymoor Heath there is a mound that we used to do sprints on. So he’d run the first lap, and afterwards, he would dive behind the mound, wait for everyone to complete the laps, and join us at the end!”

James Collins was speaking on the latest episode of Coral’s ‘Call Yourself A Fan?’, a weekly quiz show which sees football fans of a specific club go head-to-head against a team of football legends and celebrity supporters. Collins was joined by television presenter Will Best and Jimmy Bullard, a regular team captain on the show.