Cellino's promises for Leeds fans

This piece was first published in The Sun newspaper on April 5th, the day after Massimo Cellino's takeover of Leeds United went through.

Massimo Cellino has promised Leeds fans: “I will make your club great again.”

The outspoken Italian became the official owner of the Championship giants yesterday.

An independent QC overturned the Football League’s decision to fail him as a ‘fit and proper owner’.

Speaking exclusively to SunSport, the 57-year-old has vowed:

* To return Leeds to the Premier League by 2016

* To buy back their Elland Road ground and Thorp Arch training ground NEXT WEEK

* To pay the players and staff their unpaid wages

* To transform the playing squad

Whether manager Brian McDermott will be there to oversee the revival is in serious doubt though.

Cellino said: “The fans have had to put up with 10 sh***y years and I want to make them proud of this club again.

“I’ve always said that the only assets Leeds have are their fans and their history.Next week I will go to the bank and buy back Elland Road and Thorp Arch. And on Monday I will pay all the wages.

“A lot of work needs to be done on the squad. We need new players.

“I had four signings lined up in January but I couldn’t sign them because of the ownership situation — it was so frustrating.

“In the summer we will buy some players. I want to focus on English and international players.

“I have built up a fantastic scouting network with Cagliari which we will use. I have scouts in Europe, South America and Latin America.”

And Cellino has promised to return the Yorkshire side to the promised land of the Premier League for the first time since 2004.

He added: “I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep — and I admit it will be difficult to get promotion next season.

“But in 2015-16, we will earn our way back to the Premier League, which is where Leeds belong.”

The club’s managing director David Haigh has welcomed Cellino and was due to become his chief executive.

But the Italian has some bad news for Haigh... ‘You’re fired’. He said: “David has to go. I have had too much of him.”

A consortium of local businessmen called Together Leeds have claimed they will work with Cellino, but the Italian seemed to throw cold water on this.

He said: “I promised I will talk to them and that is what I will do.”

Cellino will arrive in England on Monday and plans to hold an immediate Press conference in London.

He will then travel up to Leeds to begin his transformation of the Yorkshire side.

He is still planning to sell Cagliari, although he admits “the situation is not so hot at the moment”.

Cellino said: “There is only place in my heart for one club and that is Leeds. When I get the right offer I will sell Cagliari.”

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This piece was first published in The Sun newspaper on February 9th.

Massimo Cellino has exclusively told SunSport how he will return Leeds to their former glories.

The 57-year-old Italian arrives in England tomorrow ahead of an interview with the Football League on Wednesday.

He is confident he will pass their fit and proper persons test before immediately getting to work. Cellino says he will:

* Immediately buy Elland Road * Keep manager Brian McDermott and work closely with him * Transform the club’s Academy * And give key roles to his two sons. * Speaking from his home in Miami, Cellino said he was looking forward to working alongside McDermott — despite having sacked him a week ago.

Cellino said: “I want to get to know the manager and help him.

“I hope he can help me as well. We are going to work together.

“When I am approved by the Football League I will go to the bank the next day and buy Elland Road.

“I am going to get to work straight away.

“I love the history of Leeds and I love the fans.”

Cellino has owned Italian side Cagliari for the last 22 years but is planning to sell them to focus on Leeds.

He had a buyer lined up, but the deal has stalled.

He added: “If I was running a Fiat 500 in Italy, now I have the chance to run a Ferrari.

“I feel like I did 22 years ago, when I first bought Cagliari.

“Or when I was eight-years-old and my father bought me my first bike and I woke up at 4am to ride it.

“I want to forget about Cagliari now, my heart is with Leeds.”

Cellino says he plans to use all the experience he gained from running Cagliari at the Yorkshire club.

He said: “Cagliari was recognised by UEFA as a model of a well-run club.

“We didn’t spend what we didn’t have.

“We had a €45million budget (£37m) but managed to compete with clubs with budgets of hundreds of millions.

“I am most proud of the Academy we had. I spent a lot of time and money on it and even knew the price of the seeds for the grass.

“In the end we had six home-grown players in the first team, all from Sardinia. Is there another team in Europe with a record like that?

“Imagine what we can do at Leeds — it has much more potential. I will set about finding a guy in Leeds who loves Leeds to run the Academy there.”

Cellino says he will buy a home in Yorkshire and spend a lot of time there.

And he will give his two sons roles at the club.

He said: “I am bringing my two sons with me to work there and learn about business. One is 22, the other 24.

“They speak English, Spanish, German and Italian. They have degrees from American universities.

“I am giving the future to my sons and bringing them to a big club with potential.

“One will work in the marketing department, the other will work with the secretary, learning about wages and contracts.

“They are not spoilt. They each drive a Smart car and live in modest apartments.”

Cellino has a big job on his hands to win over the Leeds supporters, who are furious about his treatment of boss McDermott.

The Italian says he is now determined to work hard and keep his head down.

He added: “I am going to a country where I want to be approved.

“I am moving to England from Italy because English football is better than Italian football.

“I have got passion and the fans loved me at Cagliari.”

He says he plans to quickly get in a couple of additions to the squad and then invest more heavily in players in the summer.

Cellino said: “In the last few years not enough money has been spent on investing in players.

“I want to reinforce the club. When you spend little you achieve little.”

'Trapped by ebola but I won't give up on these kids'

Holed up in the football academy he runs for the Craig Bellamy Foundation in Sierra Leone as fear and suspicion spreads throughout Africa, Johnny McKinstry is standing firm.

When he was sacked as manager of the national team last month, his worried parents urged him to come home to Northern Ireland. But even though more than 1,200 people have been killed by Ebola in Sierra Leone and his former players are being treated like ‘fugitives’, the academy in the capital Freetown is now a sanctuary from the devastating disease and 29-year-old McKinstry has vowed to stay on.

‘We are like an extended family here and that’s what I told my parents,’ says McKinstry, as he sits in his spartan office in the middle of the 15-acre complex.

‘There are 27 boys here and, before each enrolled, I went to meet his parents. The first thing I always said was, “I’ll look after your son”. I meant it and can’t go back on that now. If I was just doing this job for myself, I’d probably have gone home but people are relying on me and I have to stay.’

No one is allowed in or out of the academy, which was founded in 2007 and is funded by Bellamy, the only exception being McKinstry’s forays into town once a fortnight to pick up supplies. If anything, the dedication and enthusiasm of the youngsters, who range in age from 12 to 17, has actually improved in recent weeks.

‘I’ve been immensely impressed with the kids,’ says McKinstry. ‘Their strength and focus has just bowled me over.’

The Sierra Leone national team that McKinstry used to coach have become football’s lepers, chased out of every country they visit because of a disease they do not even have.

Last month they were banned from playing at home following the outbreak. All their games have become away fixtures and to say they are unwelcome guests is something of an understatement. In the last eight days they played Cameroon home and away.

Sierra Leone defender Mustapha Dumbuya, who grew up in Tottenham and plays for Notts County in League One, says: ‘When we arrived in Cameroon, we checked into our hotel and everything seemed fine.

‘Then we were told it was fully booked and that we had to leave immediately. We went to another hotel and it was empty. We were literally the only residents there.’

It turned out that the Cameroon government had asked for the visiting delegation to be quarantined.

Dumbuya and a couple of his team-mates ventured out onto the streets and received a by-now-familiar response from the locals.

‘As soon as people saw our training tops, the shouts of, “Ebola, Ebola” started,’ he says. ‘I’m getting used to it to be honest.’

Things first started to change with the Africa Cup of Nations pre-qualifier in the Seychelles in August. The team were refused entry to the country and were held in transit in Nairobi, Kenya, for two days.

Full-back Michael Lahoud, who plays for Philadelphia Union in the MLS, says: ‘We felt like fugitives. ‘We were on the run, only we were fleeing from something we didn’t know anything about.’

Eventually the Seychelles forfeited the match, so worried were they about Ebola entering their idyll and ruining the lucrative tourism industry.

This was only the start of Sierra Leone’s problems though.

They were banned from playing any matches at home by the Confederation of African Football, meaning all their games were now away fixtures. Ivory Coast wanted to ban them from entering last month and the match was confirmed so late that the Sierra Leone players had to buy their own plane tickets.

‘They tried to ban us from coming, yhen the opposition didn’t want to shake our hands or swap shirts with us,’ said Lahoud. ‘South Africa is the latest country to close its borders to Leone nationals and I can’t help feeling like we have become the scapegoats and face of this disease.’

Things reached their nadir with the fixture against DR Congo in Kinshasa. There was the customary nightmare journey, followed by hostility on the streets. Then came the match in the Mazembe Stadium. Dumbuya says: ‘Before kick-off, Johnny walked out on to the pitch, as he always used to do.

‘He looked a little shaken when he came back into the dressing room and said, “This isn’t going to be easy lads”. He wasn’t wrong. When we walked out of the tunnel the whole place just erupted and we were hit by this deafening noise.

‘It didn’t take long to work out what they were chanting — ‘E-BO-LA! E-BO-LA!’ It seemed everyone in the crowd was chanting it.’ Lahoud, who was born in Sierra Leone before moving to Washington DC at the age of five, says he will never forget that day.

‘It stung me and hurt deep inside,’ he says. ‘How could another African country — itself dealing with the disease — react like that?’

Sierra Leone lost the match 2-0 and suddenly their great form under McKinstry had evaporated.

These experiences will not deter Dumbuya from representing his country though.

‘All the boys in our squad are so passionate about playing for Sierra Leone,’ he says. ‘That applies more now than ever. We feel like we are representing the country in a positive light and giving the people something to be proud of. I’m in this for the long haul.’

The same, it appears, goes for McKinstry. ‘This is a wonderful country that has only just recovered from a terrible civil war and is now having to contend with another crisis,’ he says.

‘The least I can do is stick around and do a little bit to help.’

This piece was first published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper

Roy Keane and Gary Charles: A different perspective on the Man Utd legend

I don't know Roy Keane.

My opinions of him were always based on what I'd seen of the Irishman on TV, in the papers and what I'd read in his two autobiographies.

The image I formed was perhaps the same as yours - of a ferocious, unforgiving and uncompromising loner.

A man who has, by and large, struggled as a manager because he can't empathise with or relate to players. A man who savages anyone he feels has let him down.

A lot of that may well be true, but I got a different perspective by speaking to the former England defender Gary Charles - a friend of mine who has been a friend of Keane's for more than 25 years.

The duo first met as teenagers and shared digs together in Nottingham.

These were heady days for both men. They were becoming regulars in the first team and each looked destined for stardom.

Charles was dubbed "the Brazilian", because of his silky dribbling skills and skin tone.

After one game, legendary manager Brian Clough purred: "When Charles plays a one-two, he goes like a gazelle.

"It's so effortless - at first it looks as if he's not moving, yet he's 40 yards up the field."

There were also lots of nights out, plenty of girls - and some scrapes - along the way.

Both played in the 1991 FA Cup final against Tottenham - when Charles was chopped down by that infamous Paul Gascoigne tackle early in the game - and the defender went on to win three England caps that summer.

Although it looked like each player was on the fast-track to the top, their journeys went in different directions after this.

Keane moved to Manchester United in 1992 and we know the rest - he became the club's on-field emblem and drove them to unprecedented levels of success.

Charles's next destination was, with respect, rather less glamorous - a short move across the east Midlands to Derby County. His form seemed to have gone backwards since 1991.

The reason was probably a road accident in the summer of 1992, in which he hit and killed a teenage cyclist. Although Charles was cleared of wrongdoing, the experience - of seeing the look on the boy's face at impact, of seeing his stricken family at the inquest - had a profound effect on the footballer.

His career was still pretty stellar - he played for a very successful Aston Villa side, for Benfica in Portugal, and also for his boyhood team West Ham - but it never really reached the heights that had once been expected.

He had also sunk deeper and deeper into alcoholism. Things got really bad during a year out with a career-threatening ankle injury at Villa, and there was an infamous incident towards the end of his career, in 2002, when he collided with another car in London, and told the other driver he was a bank robber on the run before fleeing the scene.

He was sent to prison for four months for drink driving in 2004, then jailed for a year in 2005 for threatening a nightclub bouncer while serving a suspended sentence.

Drink was always at the heart of his problems. I'd need at least another 5,000 words to try and get to the root of why Charles drank - perhaps that's for another day.

This is where Keane comes in again though. The pair had kept in touch sporadically since parting ways at Forest.

When Charles was serving his sentence in Rutland Prison in 2006, he received an unexpected and lengthy letter from his old pal, who was by now the manager of Sunderland.

The letter talked about what good friends they had been and what good times they had had, before going on to say 'There but for the grace of god - what's happened to you could have been me'."

When he was a wealthy Premier League footballer, Charles found he had dozens of friends. Mysteriously, they all disappeared when he experienced problems with drink and the law.

In the letter, Keane vowed to help his old pal, saying he'd give him some guidance about starting a coaching career, and that he'd provide him with somewhere to stay when he got out of prison.

And he was good to his word. In fact Keane didn't just offer his friend a place to stay, he brought him in with him and his family.

The Irishman also took Charles to training at Sunderland, where the former full-back sometimes took part alongside the other players, and at other times organised training drills.

When the side went on a pre-season tour to Holland, Charles went along as well.

The east Londoner has now taken some of his badges and is a coach at the University of Nottingham, as well as being a part-time scout.

It's not all been plain-sailing, but he's stayed sober and is doing well, and it's quite a transformation and an achievement for him. He is also looking after two of his three sons, with the eldest having left home to take up a job.

Charles himself has to take the credit for turning his life around, but a bit of credit should also go to Keane.

Not that he'd want any credit though. In fact he'd hate that. As far as I'm aware, the Irishman has never told anyone about this. He hasn't spoken about it in interviews, or in his books.

The last thing he's wanted is a pat on the back for helping out his mate, in private.

And Charles hasn't wanted to talk about it either, which is why there aren't any quotes from him here, and why it's in a blog.

But I thought it was a story worth telling.

Cellino's gamble on Milanic

Let's be clear about one thing at the outset - Neil Redfearn wanted the Leeds manager's job on a permanent basis.

He was buoyed by the way the players responded to him in both training and matches during his four games in charge.

And he felt that, at 49, and with many years as academy boss and two previous spells as caretaker under his belt, he was ready to step up.

Massimo Cellino's logic in appointing Darko Milanic and overlooking the caretaker was that he wanted to keep Redfearn at the academy and at the club long-term (because he does have a bit of a habit of sacking managers or head coaches).

This argument stacked up only if Redfearn was happy with the arrangement. And the fact is he wanted the top job.

That makes this is a big gamble by Cellino, arguably the biggest of his tenure at Elland Road so far.

Redfearn has been strongly linked with the top job at his former club Barnsley, where he enjoys hero status from his time there as a player.

There hasn't been any contact between the parties yet, but if the Tykes do decide to replace under-pressure Danny Wilson, you can be pretty sure that Redfearn's name will be at the top of their wanted list.

That could mean Leeds losing one of their most loyal and respected servants, a man who knows the club inside out and who undeniably did a great job for them as caretaker. Record: played four, won three, drawn one.

It's why Phil Neville, admittedly not the most popular pundit among Leeds fans for obvious reasons, made pertinent points about the Milanic appointment last week.

"They've already got somebody there with the quality and the experience, who knows what the club's all about," he said.

"If they are a club who want to bring through their own players, well this lad's been doing it for the last however many years."

There have been a lot of departures at Elland Road in recent months - Benito Carbone, Andrew Umbers, Graham Bean, Dave Hockaday - the list goes on.

But Redfearn could prove particularly difficult to replace.

Trouble with Mr Bean at Leeds United

Up until today, I thought of Graham Bean as a behind-the-scenes administrator at Leeds United: a solid, suited Yorkshireman who quietly got on with the business of signing off contracts, paying bills and dealing with the Football League.

That image changed dramatically when the 53-year-old came out all guns blazing after a quite spectacular falling out with Leeds United's irascible Italian owner, Massimo Cellino.

Bean, 53, took to Twitter, using his little-known account, @FootballFactors, to publicly lambast Cellino.

He wrote "never seen morale so low anywhere (as Leeds)" and "relieved to be out of the mad house".

I spoke to Bean this evening (more of that later) and his anger was still palpable. I could picture him with his sleeves rolled up and fists clenched as he spoke.

Of course Cellino is not averse to apparent impulse sackings.

We saw that when he fired Brian McDermott before he had even taken over the club; we saw it when Benito Carbone was ditched as a technical consultant; we saw it when Andrew Umbers, who had been brought in to oversee cost-cutting at Elland Road, was ruthlessly dispensed with.

The falling out with Bean was still very unexpected though. After all, this was a man who was performing an awful lot of the administrative tasks at the club and who seemed to be quietly effective.

Bean - the Football Association's first ever compliance officer, and before that a policeman for two decades - had signed off the deals for 15 new players after being brought in on a 12-month contract as a consultant by Cellino.

The reason for his dismissal appears, on the face of it, very trivial.

This is the story. Bean agreed to Reading's request to move their league game against Leeds next week back 24 hours, from Tuesday to Wednesday.

This was because the Royals’ game against Wolves this weekend was moved from Saturday to Sunday so it could be shown live on Sky TV, and the Berkshire side wanted an extra day to recover.

Bean argues the Football League would have insisted the game was moved anyway.

He told me: “It was three months ago, and he (Cellino) was on holiday.

“Reading asked ‘Can we move the game 24 hours, from Tuesday to Wednesday’. It was the middle of transfer window and I had a thousand and one things to do.

"I agreed. The League would have made us do it anyway.

“Yesterday he (Cellino) found out about it. So I get a phone call from a lackey of his (a club employee in the accounts department) to tell me I’d been fired.”

Bean says he’s been told that Cellino was “apoplectic” when he found out about the fixture change, and was “foaming at the mouth”.

When I put Bean’s comments to Cellino, he replied: “I don’t give a fuck. I have to run this club my way. I don’t like to talk about private matters. Ciao.”

It's easy to view the Italian's actions as irrational.

But there are explanations for his actions.

First off, Cellino is incredibly competitive and completely absorbed by the club. He wouldn’t have wanted to give Reading any mercy at all after their Sunday fixture against Wolves.

He's also long harboured a suspicion that the League fixtures are weighted against his side.

When he was in the process of buying Leeds last season, they were in the middle of a long run of consecutive away games in the Championship, which he just couldn’t fathom - and he promised such a thing would never happen on his watch.

It's perhaps fair to say that Cellino should have spoken to Bean to get his reasons for the fixture switch though, rather than summarily axing him.

Bean also says there was a clause in his contract stipulating that if there was a breach, then 14 days would be allowed to remedy it, which has obviously not been adhered to here.

Bean also made a fair point when he pointed at the lack of people to help Cellino run the club when he tweeted: “no more signings – who is there to do the paperwork?”

After being informed of his dismissal, Bean says he called Cellino to confront him about his decision and the way it had been handled.

Now, I for one would have been paid to listen in to this particular conversation.

Bean says he told the Italian exactly what he thought of him, using some choice Yorkshire language, and he admits the C-bomb was dropped at least once.

Cellino was apparently quite taken aback and told Bean to “watch your mouth”.

Bean is still angry and promises this won't be the end of the matter. So, as my dearly departed nan used to say, watch this space.

Milanic '95%' to become new Leeds boss and should be confirmed on Sunday

I've had quick contact with Massimo Cellino tonight and he says it's "95% sure" that Darko Milanic will become the new Leeds United head coach.

The club's Italian owner says he will know for sure on Sunday. Presumably this is when Milanic should have sorted out his severance deal with his current club, Sturm Graz.

Privately, Cellino admits he made an error in appointing Dave Hockaday - too inexperienced a manager and lacking the profile and probably the personality for such a big role.

He realised he needed a more experienced boss to come in, which inevitably meant spending more money.

The search led him to the 46-year-old Slovenian, who was an international player of some standing, and who has had success as a manager with Maribor in Slovenia, and then with Austrian side Sturm Graz since the summer of 2013.

And this might sound flippant, but it really isn't - Milanic is also not a bad looking bloke. This will not have escaped Cellino's attention.

He regularly commented on how ugly Hockaday was and even insisted this had held him back in his coaching/ managerial career.

There were other candidates for the job, of course. Cellino tried to get Oscar Garcia, and thought he had succeeded, only for Watford to beat him to the signature of the 41-year-old Spaniard.

He also met former West Brom manager Steve Clarke, but wasn't convinced the Scot really wanted the job.

In fact Clarke admitted he wanted to manage a Premier League side.

Cellino joked that Clarke had once been assistant to Gianfranco Zola (at West Ham), so can't have been taught very well.

The two Italians famously fell out when Cellino owned Cagliari and took Zola there as a player.

The 58-year-old also met former Leeds boss Simon Grayson - and his agent. The eccentric Italian joked that he wasn't sure who was the manager and who was the agent, because the latter spoke more than the former.

Cellino admits he's baffled and frustrated that managers (or head coaches) in England all seem to have agents, and that they exert so much influence.

He insists things are different in Italy.

Anyway, it looks like Milanic is the man, so long as he can sort out the final details of his severance with Sturm Graz, and we should know on Sunday.

Another chapter begins at Elland Road, with the club about to appoint their first foreign coach.

Cellino insists that Milanic will have a talented and improving squad of players to work with if he comes in. The Italian has been impressed with their recent progress under caretaker boss Neil Redfearn.

Invictus Games: The wounded warriors who refused to surrender

There was the briefest moment of bewilderment, confusion and uncertainty, before reality set in.

Then screaming, panic and pain.

“I lifted my left hand and felt my fingers hanging off, tapping against the back of my hand, which was just a bloody stump,” remembers JJ Chalmers.

“And my right arm was gone, it just wasn’t there. That’s when I realised there was nothing I could do for myself, other than call for help.

“That’s when I started thinking ‘oh man, what have you got yourself into here?”

A massive commotion was going on all around. Blood, dust, fear.

Eventually someone arrived to help and patch him up, before having to go and help other casualties.

Two of his fellow marines had been killed, along with their Afghan interpreter.

“It was the scariest thought in the world, being alone,” Chalmers admits.

He was only thinking of survival until he heard the unmistakeable, heavy whirr of a helicopter overhead, and at that point he knew he wouldn’t die on that patch of ground.

John James Chalmers, 23. He had been a Royal Marines commando.

The best of the best, the elite. Doing a job he loved, alongside men he admired, pushing himself to the absolute limit, each and every day.

A few days later, he was lying in his bed in hospital. The right side of his face had almost collapsed; he had lost two fingers and had the others wired back on; his right elbow had disintegrated; his legs were badly injured.

“I was lying there thinking ‘what’s to come? What is ahead of me?’”

Screaming in the dark

Senior aircraftman Mike Goody was having to live at home with his parents again after being blown up by a roadside bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in August 2008.

Mike Goody was trapped under his vehicle for four hours The 22-year-old had been trapped under the wreckage of the armoured vehicle he was driving for four hours, before eventually being pulled free.

After that there were 14 operations to save his lower leg, but they were in vain and it had to be amputated. He was also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and terrifying flashbacks.

It was an incredibly tough time for both him and his parents, Frank and Jackie. His mum Jackie remembers one particularly vivid night.

“Mike was in his bedroom and you could hear him screaming and shouting and banging on the door, speaking some bizarre language I later found out was Pashto, which he’d learnt out there,” she recalls.

“It was just a case of trying to calm him down and talk to him.”

Goody was struggling to cope though and sought solace in alcohol.

“A typical day for me would be waking up from an epic day’s drinking, cracking my first beer open within 10 or 15 minutes, then onto the next and the next,” he remembers.

“Then it was onto the spirits. Then I’d be thinking ‘how can I successfully kill myself?’ Not just a fleeting thought, but in-depth planning.

“I felt like I was a burden. If I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be a burden any more.”

'Competitive beast' is back

Like many other injured servicemen, corporal Paul Vice was taken to the military rehabilitation centre at Headley Court in Surrey.

That’s where the possibilities offered by sport opened up in front of him.

Wheelchair tennis, swimming, athletics – he tried them all, before deciding he liked sitting volleyball, cycling and archery best of all.

His injuries were numerous and severe after he was blown up by an IED, or improvised explosive device, in Afghanistan in August 2011.

He reels them off: “Four hundred significant wounds up and down my left side, quite a bad head injury, severed carotid artery.”

Vice, now 31, can still clearly remember the explosion that tore him apart three years ago.

"I was walking along on a normal day patrol," he says "and saw two guys hunkered down in a field.

"Then I saw an oil drum poking out of the bottom of a wall. I knew what it was and ran, but not fast enough. I turned round and that was it. Boom. Game over."

Not quite game over though.

The sight of Vice pulling the cord of his bow using his mouth during an archery session shows his ingenuity and determination to overcome his injuries.

“Just because you are down, doesn’t mean you are broken or beaten and can’t compete,” Vice says. “Any marine is a competitive beast and you have to get back to that as quickly as possible.”

Rock stars take to the stage

Sport also rescued Goody, providing a salvation from alcoholism and suicidal thoughts.

He competed in a marathon and iron man competition and was within a whisker of being chosen for a trek to the South Pole with Prince Harry.

Then he rediscovered his love of a swimming.

As a teenager, Goody had competed in galas up and down the country and even hoped to compete in the Olympics one day, although he ultimately lacked the dedication to realise his dream.

Now he is giving the sport his all and has been selected to compete for Britain at the Invictus Games.

For Chalmers, sport reminded him what he was capable of.

“Not being arrogant, but I didn’t used to be an average human being,” he says.

“I was a Royal Marines commando. I was capable of a whole lot and pushed myself to the absolute limit. But in the past few years, to keep my head above water, the average became acceptable.

“Once you get involved in sport, you realise you are capable of a whole lot more.”

He took up cycling, got better and better, and started to compete.

“Getting on that bike, doing 45km and enjoying the pain and punishment and looking forward to getting back on and doing even better next time – that’s how I used to feel before I was injured,” he beams.

He has been selected by Britain for non-amputee cycling and will compete at the Lee Valley Velopark on Saturday September 13th.

Britain's captain for the Invictus Games is Dave Henson MBE, who will be competing in sitting volleyball, as well as the 200m and 400m.

The 29-year-old, who was blown up by an IED while serving with the Engineer Regiment in Helmand in February 2011, says the Games will be a chance to “come together and show we can’t be overcome or beaten”.

“And in front of everyone we care about,” he adds.

Goody is relishing the chance to “prove to myself and my parents and family that I can do stuff”.

His dad, Frank, a former military man himself, is not prone to outpourings of emotion, yet he admits it could be difficult to keep himself together when his son competes.

“I was terrified when I first saw his injuries,” he admits. “I wondered ‘will he cope?’ And, yes, he did cope. What holds him back? Nothing. He will go for everything.”

The Games will also provide an opportunity for the men to stand alongside their former colleagues once more.

“The thing I am looking forward to most of all is getting in amongst the lads again,” Chalmers says. “They’re the same sort of friends I had in Afghanistan.

"This group of people I am just honoured to know. They are my inspiration and should be everyone’s inspiration.

“The guys are rock stars and should be the most famous people in the world.”