Jason Cundy began his career at Chelsea, coming through the youth ranks and making it all the way to the first team. After retiring from the game, Jason has gone on to build a successful career working in media.
Jason has featured on the likes of TalkSport and ChelseaTV, so we caught up with him to discuss his time as a player and how he has built a career within the media.
Here is what Jason had to say:
Let’s start with your playing career, could you please tell our readers about your time as a professional footballer?
Well, obviously started out at Chelsea, I was always a Chelsea fan. I was at Crystal Palace, Wimbledon and West Ham for a period. I wanted to play for Chelsea so that was one of my number one choice. My Dad wrote to Gwyn Wlliams, head of Chelsea’s youth system, for a trial and he came to watch me in a Sunday league game and invited me to training at Stamford Bridge after the game. Came through the youth system, and then went up to the first team which was a seriously proud day for me as a Chelsea fan. I joined Chelsea as an 11 year old and made my debut at 20. So 9 years it took to get from my trial to the first team.
How different was Chelsea as a club whilst you were there?
Name only. It’s still got the same feel about it, it’s the draw. It’s still got the same aura about it I suppose that it had when I was a kid growing up. I think football has changed, not just Chelsea, football the game itself is no longer the same game as it was when I grew up. Football clubs are very different, Chelsea have had huge amount of change, more than most I would say. Probably the changes at the ground is certainly the biggest visual transformation. When you look at it compared to what the old bridge looked like, the old shed and what it looks like now. You can’t really, unless you knew what it looked like, even now it is very difficult to sit in the east stand and image what did it looked like when I was a kid sitting there. It’s very hard to remember, to visualise what it looked like, if you look at photographs and you can obviously see where the East Stand is, even the old gates that you used to come in on the left and go up to the steps of the shed, so that’s the biggest change.
The success is another change that we never experienced through growing up supporting Chelsea, I never saw us win anything as a supporter, expect I think the Full Members Cup where we went to Wembley and beat Man City. So in real terms, I never saw us win anything. That’s the two biggest changes. I think that goes with how much money is in the game and also Roman Abramovich coming along, he really helped us to get to where we wanted to be a little bit quicker.
You moved to Tottenham from Chelsea, did your time at Chelsea affect your time at Tottenham? Or was the rivalry not what it is now?
Oh, it was fierce! I mean, Spurs was always the club, even growing up, that you hated Spurs. When you played them, you had to beat them. That was one of the biggest, if not the biggest game and Arsenal, but there was something about us playing Spurs that stood out, from the U15’s, U16’s, youth team and reserves. So they were always big games that stood out.
It came out of the blue really, Ian Porterfield phoned me up, after Sheffield United at home, I scored actually, my last game. I later found out that the deal was only going to happen if we got knocked out of the FA Cup, we lost to Sunderland in the replay of the Quarter Finals at Roker Park. I found later, had we won that game, I wouldn’t have made that move possibly until the summer, depending on if we had gone on to win the cup, so that move was always down to us getting knocked out of the FA Cup, back then, there was a transfer deadline day, where you had to move by the last Thursday of March, which we got knocked out the previous week before deadline day. There was a lot of things that happened around that move that I wasn’t aware of before the move took place. Then I got a phone call from Ian Porterfield, this was on a Monday, he said ‘we’ve accepted a bid for you and Terry Venables is going to phone you this afternoon’. Which was a complete shock! I said to him ‘what does this mean’? Does this mean if I don’t go, will I be in the reserves? Don’t forget, the clubs held all the cards. They could have done all sorts of things, forced you to play in the reserves, not pick you. I said is there a possibility that will happen? He said ‘I want you to play for the first team, I don’t want you to go‘, but he couldn’t offer me any more guarantees than he wanted to. He was very honest with me, to the point where he said I don’t want you to go, but of course when a club has made their decision, I had to make mine. Once a club has accepted an offer for you, you have got to go, with players now, you don’t often see a club, in fact I can’t think of any real situation where an offer has been accepted and the player has not gone. Once you’re in a scenario with a club, that’s decided the money is more important than you are.
How did you then transform your career, with you now working in the media, how did that come around after your playing days?
There wasn’t one particular turning point, it happened over a series of moments. I have always enjoyed working in the media. Even when I was playing, doing interviews. I always enjoyed that side of it, facing the cameras, facing the media. Whether that be written press or audio. That side I have always felt comfortable doing. When I was injured at Ipswich, I started doing some co-commentary for BBC Suffolk. When I was younger I had cancer so I was out for quite some time and you did it for experience more than anything, that’s the first time I actually really did that side of the media. Commentating on games, talking about games as opposed to me being a player, being a pundit so that’s how it started.
Then of course when I retired, you find slightly more opportunities to talk about a game from a different angle, whether it be interviews on Talksport or BBC or whether someone from the media would phone me up, if there was a game between Chelsea and Spurs, or even Ipswich and Spurs, Ipswich and Chelsea, they’d get my thoughts on it as an ex-player. Then I started doing bits and pieces for Talksport, started doing loads of stuff with ChelseaTV. Commentaries as ChelseaTV crew, then went on to the radio station, Big Blue. We use to have commentaries of the games, on a station called Big Blue and we had all the rights, so I use to do the commentaries on those. Then it got stolen by Absolute radio, then ChelseaTV started to offer me more work, I started to go in front of the cameras, having guests and being a pundit. It just snowballed, it just happened. More work came my way, more opportunities came my way. Then it became a straight choice, I was working with Chelsea’s academy coaching U12’s and U13’s. So it became a straight choice between coaching or working in the media, in particular Talksport. The opportunity to start working on a daily basis came, when that happened I had to take the opportunity, because the financial rewards are far greater for a broadcaster as they are certainly for an academy coach. That grew and grew and grew and eventually before you know it, you’ve got a career in the media. It wasn’t something that I sat down and planned, it happened and the opportunities came and I took them.
Presenting ChelseaTV, would have given you some great opportunities. Do you have a memorable anecdote from your time presenting the show?
I remember the first ever show I presented on ChelseaTV was during a World Cup, Tommy Langley may well have been my guest and we were taking phone calls after an England game. So we all had to watch the England game. I can’t remember whether it was Euros or the World Cup, but it was a major tournament. Chelsea had a lot of players, Terry, possibly Ashley Cole, possibly Joe Cole, Frank definitely. So we had a huge interest in the England side. I remember I was with the producer and because it was my first show I was quite nervous. They said to me, have a couple of glasses of wine, that’ll settle you down, trust me. At the time, I remember being so nervous, my mouth was dry on air. My heart was beating, it was very different to what it is now.
I did do a show with Scott Minto where Scott got cramp! His hamstrings cramped up and he had to stand up during the show, he was kicking the table underneath me and he was in big pain. I lost it, I had a fit of giggles during a live show, which was possibly the funniest thing that has ever happened to me on air. Watching Scott deal with cramp was pretty funny.
Through ChelseaTV you would have seen a lot of the team this year, how did you rate the season as a whole?
It was an excellent season. The league form alone was brilliant, certainly the early part of the season. I think Jose worked out once Costa got injured, we had to play a different way. The first time we actually won a game 1-0 in the league was in February of this year. So people think we were 1-0 merchants, I think from that moment on there was 5 or 6 between the first and the end of the season, a very short space of time. I think if you look at that, that shows what Jose decided to do when we lost Costa and when we got beat by Spurs on the first day of the year. I think he realised we had to tighten things up at the back, had to play a slightly different way. Which I think is brilliant, the fact he change the team, without changing the personal, but change the way we approach the game. Still getting the results but in a very different way, which I thought was brilliant.
Obviously the League Cup was excellent, the FA Cup wasn’t. The game where we got beat by Bradford, was a dark day. That was a real dark day, as a fan one of the darkest. I think that’s probably the biggest shock in the clubs 110 year history. I think that goes down there with no questions. Leaving the bridge that day was horrible.
I think the biggest one was the Champions League. We should have really eased past PSG when we had the man advantage, I think Jose got it wrong. I think he sat back, if we had taken the game too them, I don’t think they could have lived with us. They grew in confidence and we allowed them too. Once they got a foot hold in the game, we found it very difficult to change and that was the biggest surprise and disappointment this year. We didn’t lose a game in the Champions League, yet we went out and I think it was a poor show. It was a really poor show, considering what we could have done, we limped out of the competition with no real fight.
Read Part 2 here!
