Banned, stabbed and dropped: Wallwork's walk on the wilder side

Take Ronnie Wallwork. Quietly spoken, respectful, yet a conduit for out-of-the-ordinary events.

Banned for life by the Belgian FA following an altercation with a referee. Stabbed seven times by the jealous ex-boyfriend of a girl he had begun to date. He even saw Sir Alex Ferguson brandish a knife when he was a youngster at Manchester United.

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Even when he changes clubs, the manager who signs him often departs. Now 30, Wallwork — and for that matter Sheffield Wednesday manager Brian Laws — hopes his timing has improved with a move to Hillsborough which today hosts the first Sheffield derby of the season.

Consider that Jamie Carragher, a fellow pupil at the FA National School of Excellence at Lilleshall, this week played his 500th match for Liverpool. Wallwork has made just 157 starts in English football over the same period.

He has had seven separate loan spells and not once has a transfer fee been paid for his services. It is tempting to categorise the Mancunian's career as unfulfilled. He does not see it that way, however.

'Obviously I could have played more games,' he admitted. 'But that's the manager's choice at the time. If he doesn't fancy you, you've just got to work hard and get another chance. You can't pick yourself in the team every week. If you could, you'd be playing thousands of games for Real Madrid or whoever.

'I'm happy here now at Sheffield Wednesday. I'm signed until the end of the season. Hopefully I can prove to the manager that I can play in his team and we can push up the league.'

Wallwork's walk on the wilder side began as part of the first batch of loanees to United's Belgian sister club, Royal Antwerp.

In a league match on the eve of United's Champions League final triumph in 1999, a disputed lastminute goal that condemned Antwerp to defeat sent Wallwork, then 21, into a rage. He confronted the referee in the tunnel and emerged with a life ban for allegedly striking the official.

'It was nothing like full-blooded punches,' said Wallwork. 'It got blown out of all proportion. It was stupid of me. You live and learn and it was a mistake that I made, but I think the Belgian FA made it bigger than it was.'

The punishment was reduced on appeal to a one-year ban that only applied to Belgian football.

Ferguson flew over to support his case — a typical gesture of concern, according to the player.

Mind you, the occasion Fergie brandished a knife in Wallwork's presence had him worried.

'He used to call the young lads up to his office. I hadn't had a shave that morning and had quite a beard. He produced this knife — I don't know why he had a knife in his office — but he was just joking about, saying: "Get a shave, you might want this".

What was anything but a joke was the incident in a Manchester nightclub in November 2006 in which Wallwork suffered stab wounds to his hand, stomach and back, requiring emergency surgery to save his life.

'I was out with my girlfriend for a drink and basically he just came over to me. At the time I didn't know that I had actually been stabbed until I saw the blood. After a while I had lost that much blood I fainted.

'I woke up in hospital. You just don't think something like that is going to happen and when it does it's such a shock you don't think it's happened to you.

'People who know me know I'm not anything bad. They know I'm a nice person. It's just one of those things.'

Wallwork had to give evidence in court and his assailant was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison. The wounds, both physical and mental, took a long time to heal. It was 10 months before he played again, in a loan spell at Huddersfield.

His 18 games there were the most for any club apart from West Bromwich where, under Bryan Robson — now Sheffield United manager — he was Player of the Year in 2004/05 when the club pulled off its miraculous escape from relegation to the Championship.

His lack of games means Wallwork feels fresh as he enters his thirties. Perhaps his knack for attracting the wrong kind of attention will desert him at last.