Paul Gascoigne was asleep. In all likelihood, in recovery mode following his 29th birthday celebrations that marked the end of England’s Euro ‘96 warm-up games in China and Hong Kong.
England were flying home. The previous night had been spent in Hong Kong’s Jump club where famously the centrepiece was a dentist's chair in which patrons stars sat prone, and alcohol was poured down their throats.
Some of England’s squad took part. Photos made the front page of the tabloids (“I only went in for a filling,” Paul Gascoigne later quipped to FFT), and it was generally bad look for the team back home on the eve of a major tournament.
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It was a dangerous move, the bear had been poked. Gascoigne, emotional at the best of times, immediately attempted to find the culprit, vowing that no-one would get any rest until they had been identified.
What followed was a lively journey home, two TV sets and a table were damaged on the plane (to the tune of £5,000) and Dennis Wise was locked in the overhead luggage compartment. Whether voluntary or involuntary, we haven’t been able to verify.
“I don’t think Gazza required any prompt to become excitable,” says Shearer. “But honestly, to this day, I couldn’t tell you whether it was me or not – I wouldn’t take his word for it!
“I remember more about Hong Kong and the dentist’s chair than I do the games to be honest! We’d finished the games and were about to head home, and decided to go out – or we were ‘let out’ for a few drinks that turned into a few more and then a few more.”
Perhaps the problems began when Terry Venables put assistant Bryan Robson in charge of the players on their night off. Shearer laughs at the memory.
“Yeah, I mean, Robbo was renowned for having as good a time as anyone, and he was a great bloke – he still is. But it probably wasn’t the wisest idea to send Robbo to keep an eye on us. We all know that Robbo did like a pint or two.
“Before we knew it, there were one or two sat in the dentist’s chair and things had gone a little too far. I was there, but I was at the back. I could see everything happening but I was hiding away.
“I thought, ‘This isn’t going to be a good look if it gets out’ – it did, then all hell broke loose. But to be fair to Terry, he stuck by us and used the coverage as a rod. We needed to repay him.”
The dentist chair and plane incident was seized upon negatively by the English tabloids, but Venables cleverly used the bad press to build an ‘us against them’ mentality. The England team's spirit grew and got them through their first two group games unscathed vs Switzerland and Scotland.
They hammered the Dutch, buried their penalty hoodoo vs Spain in the quarter-finals and came within a penalty kick of beating the Germans.
“I think we believed [we could win the tournament] after the Netherlands game, and then to win a penalty shootout against Spain. I thought, ‘Hmmm’. You just get the feeling that this might be it.
“We’d given everyone something to shout about. It had been such a fantastic tournament, but it wasn’t to be”.
Alan Shearer was speaking to FourFourTwo as part of his work with Topps to promote the official UEFA EURO 2024 sticker collection, available now from Topps.com and all good retailers
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