DAVID ROCASTLE
ROCKY
David Rocastle wasn’t just a fantastic footballer – to those within Highbury’s hallowed marble halls, the Lewisham maestro represented something much greater. FFT celebrates the life and career of a Gunners hero with those who knew him best, two decades on from his tragic passing aged only 33
Words Gavin Newsham
D
avid Dein has a coffee table in his study. At first glance, it’s an unremarkable piece of furniture. Have a butcher’s underneath, however, and you will notice something unusual propping up the simple square of mahogany. There, dressed in Arsenal socks and shorts, are a pair of actual legs. These are no ordinary appendages, either – they are life-size replicas of David ‘Rocky’ Rocastle’s.
Dein’s table was a present from wife Barbara. Knowing how much her husband admired the Arsenal midfielder, she had also bought him a new wallet with a photograph of Rocastle inside, rather than one of, say, her or their children.
“As a member of the Arsenal board and in a position where you shouldn’t really have favourites, Rocky was unquestionably mine,” the former vice-chairman tells FourFourTwo.
But then again, David Rocastle always had that effect on people.
On March 31, it will be 20 years since Rocastle passed away after a battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, an aggressive variant of cancer which affects the immune system, aged just 33. Ask anyone who knew him and they all offer the same opinion without exception: not only was he an extraordinary player but, more than that, he was also an exceptional human being. Rocastle’s famous ethos was simple: “Remember who you are, what you are and who you represent.”
Born in the London Borough of Lewisham, Rocastle was brought up in Brockley on the same Honor Oak estate as friend and future team-mate, Ian Wright. When Rocastle was five, his father Leslie died from pneumonia aged just 29, leaving mother Linda to bring up her five children. David, as the oldest, was now the man of the household, and he had to grow up pretty quickly.
“He was our role model and we all looked up to him,” his brother Steve explains to FFT. “He always had our back.”
At school, Rocastle was a model student. Although he thought about becoming a PE teacher one day, it was clear that his gift for football would take him in another direction. He soon found his weekends taken up by representing local club Vista, then Lewisham Way – a club set up specifically to give young black boys from the local housing estates an opportunity to play.
Nominally a central midfielder, Rocastle’s obvious talent meant he could play anywhere on the pitch. “It was hard to pin him down,” says Steve Rocastle. “If they were winning, Dave would be upfront, trying to score more. If it was tight he would drop back, making sure they didn’t concede. I know I’m biased, but he could do it all.”
Word started to spread about the boy from Brockley. He was offered a trial at Millwall, but the Lions declined to sign him. Instead, Arsenal scout Terry Murphy was impressed by Rocastle’s boundless energy and balletic grace on the ball, and eventually persuaded Gunners boss Terry Neill to offer him a place in the club’s academy.