The international break saw Fabio Capello serve up some home truths to one of the Premier League's biggest names.

Andy Carroll, yet to set the world alight at Liverpool, was warned by the England manager to change his ways if he wanted to remain part of the national squad. The most expensive player in the domestic game, Liverpool having coughed up £35 million last January to lure their man away from Newcastle, Carroll was warned to curb his alcohol intake and take a hard look at his lifestyle.

Fabio, with his less than perfect grasp of English and understandable lack of grass roots contacts throughout the domestic game, would not have sat down for this fatherly chat ahead of the Bulgaria game without drawing on information from sources closer to the player. So alarm bells must be ringing in a few quarters regarding Carroll's tendency to stray - again - from the straight and narrow.

The boy has form, even before landing at Liverpool, a city with vices aplenty to tempt the impressionable, the immature and the overpaid young footballer. At Newcastle Andy managed two appearances before the beak inside a year for assault, once inside a night club when he was fuelled up on booze (rumoured to have been over 20 cocktails), then slapping his girlfriend around after a row. Magistrates ordered him to lodge with club captain Kevin Nolan.

None of us expect our sportsmen to lead monastic lives. The only surprising aspect of the story above is that we don't hear of more such cases. I've seen plenty of internationals at airports, along quiet hotel corridors or on their hols lighting up. Boozing all the way back on the team bus after a big away win was common currency right up to the modern era, it probably still goes on down the lower leagues. I've even sat at restaurant tables quaffing quality French reds with half the Moroccan national side, devout Muslims to a man presumably.

Capello's warning to Carroll made headlines, but was quickly engulfed as England won their two qualifiers without him and we moved on to purely football matters. I would have forgotten it too had I not leafed through some old Fulham fanzines and came upon an article that got me thinking. Thinking about footballers who squander their talent.

Breaking up the tedium of a weekend without Fulham action, I turned up two fanzines from our seminal season of 1996-7. Diehards won't need telling this of course saw our return under Mickey Adams from the brink of extinction. 17th in the fourth division the previous season, penniless and in real peril of being evicted from Craven Cottage, we had just come through a dreadful campaign which saw us finish in the lowest position in our history, and as the bottom club in London. Yes, even below Barnet, who had thumped us 3-0 on the final day of a dismal season.

From chairman to charlady the club was a total shambles. There was a chasm of deep suspicion between the board and supporters, gates were averaging around 4,000, and the football being played under a manager who could not even get the players fit was pathetic. Our centre-forward at the time was Scotsman Mike Conroy, a journeyman pro at 30 whose salad days seemed long behind him. The club had burned the last £60,000 they had on signing him from Preston. When being shown a yellow during the last months of that awful season at Cambridge our long-suffering band of travelling fans (to our shame) led the chanting "Off, off, off!" It was, as the player himself said in print, 'dog's abuse from the home fans for much of the season.'

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Toofif editor David Lloyd's first issue for that new season harked back to the humiliating last day defeat at Barnet, yet presciently, and with nothing more to go on than a hunch, David, before a ball had been kicked, predicted the side under Adams would make promotion. So, fast forward to David's Spring issue, which contains a long interview with our new Superhero, who for a spell that winter was the leading scorer in all four divisions, ending the season with 23 goals as we went up. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the self same Mike Conroy! Sensitive and loyal to the cause in equal measure, in the piece Conroy refers to the hostility he'd endured, and admitted, "though everyone's happy we're top and I'm knocking them in, I don't forget." Hmmm...but the next paragraph goes on to speak of Mike's upbringing on the Clyde, his philosophy in football and his integrity. Let me quote: "Teetotal and a non-smoker, Conroy was taught at an early age to always give of his best (he had six clubs before joining us). Professional football offers a short career, stressed his father, you owe it to yourself to pursue it with single-minded dedication."

Here's Mike in his own words from the article. "I watch some of my fellow professionals ruin their careers through stupidity. They allow drink and drugs to wreck their lives. They have no idea how lucky they are, how privileged we are to be playing this game for a living. For a while at Clydebank I had to go out to work. It was a real eye-opener, slogging your guts out every hour of the day for a paltry wage. Every professional footballer should have that sort of experience. I am incredibly lucky."

For our Australasian Whites, as I'm sure they know, Mike settled in Australia and is nowadays I believe coaching amateur sides in Victoria. If you can get him along to a function, although not a natural speaker, he'll give you top value talking about his roller coaster career at Fulham. He scored one of the greatest goals I ever saw from any Fulham side at Wycombe in the League Cup, arrowing a left-foot shot home from two yards inside his own half. David Lloyd and I were standing together on halfway, and believe me, he meant it!

D'ya think Andy Carroll's ever heard of Mike Conroy?

Countdown to Blackburn coming up this week as we get back to action Sunday, and yes, Bryan's got his work permit and has been training with the team.

COYW! Twitter@fulhamphil

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