Interview Rodney Marsh

The chances are that anyone reading this section of the newspaper will tomorrow be unwrapping an autobiography by a sporting great - hoary anecdotes from golfers on the seniors tour, lengthy post-rationalisation from failed football managers, boastful tales from retired cricket umpires about how humble they are: apparently most recipients do not even read the stuff, which means we have one thing in common with the authors.

QPR supporters, Fulham fans or anyone who had a passing interest in the Tampa Bay Rowdies will be in danger of finding the latest addition to the genre in their stocking: Priceless, by Rodney Marsh. Manchester City fans, though, for reasons that will follow, would be less chuffed to receive it.

The flaxen-haired forward of the Seventies and pioneer of football in America (he still owns 24% of the Rowdies, a shareholding once valued at $450,000 but now, he says, worth "precisely nothing") Marsh is these days best known for his contributions to Sky's magnificently compulsive Gillette Soccer Saturday. As his forthright appearances on the show might suggest, if Marsh's book is found under the Christmas tree, one commodity sparingly used in sports retrospectives can be guaranteed: honesty. This, after all, is the pundit who once said that Bradford City were so bad that, if they stayed in the Premiership, he would shave his head on the pitch at Valley Parade. City duly survived and the appointment with the clippers was kept. True to form, when we meet and he is asked what motivated him to put processor to paper, Marsh comes back with a direct response.

"The money."

Not, then, the standard sporting author's reply: the opportunity to set the record straight, to tell it like it was, to embark on an illuminating journey of self-discovery?

"Nah," he says. "I was approached by a literary agent with what seemed to me to be a very good deal. So I done it. But I think people will be surprised by some of the stuff that's in there. There's a lot about my life story that people will find interesting."

Such as?

"Well, actually, having said that, it's probably only 60% of the story," he says. "I was disappointed so much was taken out by the lawyers. I suppose it's just a little book for the publishers and they're a multi-million pound operation and they didn't want to risk anything. But for me it makes the story at little staccato. When a bit's removed it doesn't quite flow."

So what kind of tales have been excised by the delete button?

"Well, I don't know if I can tell you."

Oh go on, no one else is listening.

"Oh, all right, I don't see why not, I mean it is all true," says Marsh who, it becomes clear within about five minutes of meeting up, lives for a good yarn. "One was about this famous Sixties actor, they thought it might damage his reputation. But it was a true story and I'll tell you it happily. We're in Tramp [nightclub], me, Bestie, Bobby Moore - and Bestie only goes and clocks this bloke. Oh gawd, he's gone over, glasses all over the place, Bestie's chinned him. See the thing was, George thinks he insulted his wife, he says to him: 'Apologise or I'll smack you one.' He doesn't and George dinks him one."

Famous people getting cained at Tramp: that is the image we all have of Rodney in his prime: the 70s slicker, the glamorous gadabout - tall, handsome, carefree, as much man about town as footballer. There is a picture taken at the time by Terry O'Neill featured in a new photo book called Football: The Golden Age (for which, by coincidence, Marsh has written the foreword) that sums up the sort of figure he cut in his heyday. It shows him, George Graham, Terry Venables and other 70s trend-setters ("Terry Mancini - he was one. Terry bloody Mancini!") all wearing gangster garb: pinstripe suits, fedoras and two-tone shoes. Marsh looks as though he has stepped straight from the set of The Sting.

"Wasn't far from the truth, as it happens," he says. "We liked to enjoy ourselves away from the game, nothing wrong with that."

Marsh has never been shy of workshopping up yarns from the boozin', brawlin', birdin' 70s for the after-dinner circuit. For five years in the early nineties, he was on the road with George Best doing a question and-answer show, shamelessly mining the nostalgia seam. He says he has nothing to be ashamed of and that, when he let his hair down, he never brought opprobrium on his club or his family. Unlike some of today's players, he says, he was discreet.

But surely Marsh came from a time in which much went unreported? In a media world where kiss-and-tell revelations concerning Third Division journeymen have tabloid currency today's players could not get away with what he did without notice and censure.

"Fair point," he says. "But you have to use your head a bit whatever era you're in. I mean Kieron Dyer, he's gone to Spain, he's gone to a disco where there's all these Geordies in the black and white shirts and he's got up on the stage and given it [he does a mime of heavy drinking]. There's a fair chance the papers are going to hear about it. Bobby Moore, the England captain, he had some rare old nights. But he knew where to go, where was appropriate. Nobody outside football knew anything."

Despite the tales, it would be a mistake to characterise Marsh as a man locked in the past. True, he enjoys bathing in the warm light of nostalgia, peering through the honeyed lens which transforms the 70s from ugly kick and rush into a sublime time of sensible drinkers, glorious football and a maverick genius at every club. But ask him about the present and he is no less enthusiastic.

"I think today's football is absolutely bloody brilliant," he says. "When I see a player like Thierry Henry doing what he can do, woah. I get a real kick out of watching him play."

This is what is so engaging about Marsh: he confounds all stereotypes. Despite the misty-eyed reminiscences he is still clearly in love with the game. Why else would he, whenever he can, take himself down to Kingstonian and watch non-league football from the terraces? It is his active involvement, he says, that stops him from coming over all Fred Trueman about the past.

"I think of myself as incredibly lucky, you know, compared to some of the lads I played with," he says. And he is not simply referring to his physical condition: with none of the arthritic hangover in the joints from use of cortisone that has crippled so many of his contemporaries, he is in fine shape, able to play tennis every day.

"I love what I do, I love the vehicle I'm lucky enough to earn my living in. The thing is, there is nothing compared to playing. If anyone tells you anything can match the sheer adrenalin rush of scoring a great goal in front of 100,000 people at Wembley, then they are lying. Because nothing can. And I think that's what's so hard for some lads, they can never find anything remotely to match that and they just live in the past."

But Marsh has the present to work in. Still living in America, where he is a partner in a property company with his son, he comes to London for four-week stretches, ensconcing himself in the Sky studio on Saturday afternoons in the company of several other grizzled old pros, getting over-excited about a match he is watching on a TV monitor.

"It is bizarre when you put it like that but it's a cult, no question," he says. "The secret of Soccer Saturday is that we have no idea why it works. Don't get me wrong, I think Jeff Stelling [the presenter] is a genius, by the way. But we don't try too hard, we just get on and do it. I don't go in for analysis much, I just talk like I would if I was having a beer with you in the pub: 'Gor blimey, that's bloody brilliant by Michael Owen.' Or I'd see something spectacular by [Juan Sebastian] Veron and just shout out, 'did you see that?' Which of course the viewers can't."

It is funny he should mention Veron. Had he seen a piece in the Observer saying that the Argentine is the Rodney Marsh of Manchester United, the luxury signing whose arrival has unbalanced the reds in the way Marsh did when he was signed for City back in 1972, just as the club seemed to be heading for the title?

"I did as it happens, yeah," he says. "That's the reputation I've got. I'm remembered in the game as the man who messed up City. When Newcastle signed [Faustino] Asprilla, he was the Rodney Marsh of Newcastle. Now Veron's the Rodney Marsh of United."

Is that a fair analysis?

"Veron? Yeah, maybe. Terrific player, but you can't deny he's upset the shape."

He was missing the point, the Rodney Marsh bit. Nearly 30 years on, does he think it is legitimate still to blame him for costing City a title of which they have had not even a sniff since?

"I joke about it now in my after-dinners," he says. "You make a laugh out of it."

But did he destroy City?

"Yeah," he says after a moment's pause. "You'd have to say I did. We were five points clear when I joined in the March; it did mess up the balance. I'd be a liar if I said my arrival didn't change things."

And did he know it at the time?

"I did. There was one game when we lost at home - I forget who against - and that was the day Derby caught us up and we all knew it was over. That night I went out on my own and got absolutely slaughtered."

Which is something, in today's environment, Veron is very unlikely to do, however culpable he may feel for United's temporary embarrassment.

"Pity," says Marsh. "Did me no harm at all."

· Priceless, by Rodney Marsh, is published by Headline, priced £16.99.

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