Kuyt rises to the challenge
Charity is a priority for the Liverpool striker after cancer killed his father

Jonathan Northcroft
The Times Online
Tuesday 21 October 2008

To Sandra, who nine years ago was given 18 months to live, it is a sustaining place of friendship. To Jackie, diagnosed with a terminal illness six years ago, it is a place of laughter. She’s sharp as a tack, Jackie. “They can’t take your sense of humour away - and they can’t give you one if you didn’t have it in the first place , ” she observes.

To Dirk Kuyt , although this is his first visit, it is a place that resonates. We are at Woodlands, a day hospice in Aintree that through the Premier League’s Creating Chances initiative was awarded £4,000 towards its appeal to build a new bedded unit, plus a player appearance from one of the Liverpool squad.

More than 100 terminally ill people and their families are supported by Woodlands. Kuyt has come to talk football. The hospice holds discussion groups that encourage participants to focus on a subject bringing them pleasure and to treasure positive memories connected with it. Football is today’s topic and attending is important to Kuyt. His wife, Gertrude, was a geriatric nurse before their children were born and in June 2007 he lost his father, Dirk senior, to cancer, after a long struggle.

“I look at the families visiting the people here and of course I’ve had the same moments a couple of years ago,” says Kuyt. “I know what people are feeling when they come here. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to visit and maybe leave some people with a bit of a positive feeling. You know, put something else in their minds. I think the way of life in Liverpool is to be positive and the people look to the future and not so much to the past. It’s good to see the people here laughing and sharing some moments and trying to forget their problems.”

The death of his father, such a proud supporter of his son’s career, who when he was ill still travelled over from Holland to see games at Anfield, affected Kuyt badly. He is a lesson in how the public sometimes see footballers in two-dimensional parameters no more revealing than the pictures on their television screens. Kuyt, Liverpool’s top league scorer in 2006-07, scored just three league goals last season, two of them penalty kicks, and was criticised for his loss of form. Few took into account the personal grief that was weighing on him.

“It was difficult last year,” he says. “It’s hard to play when you are losing somebody who’s really close to you. It’s hard, with your life, just to keep moving. Football is always moving on and the world keeps going on and you are just standing still by a moment, a very sad moment. I needed some time. These things happen and of course they can also happen to a footballer, so the only thing you can do is keep working really hard and try to get your form back as quick as possible. Now I’m feeling stronger than I was feeling a year ago.”

Kuyt’s performances attest to that. Only Xabi Alonso has an equal claim to be regarded as Liverpool’s player of 2008-09 and, despite his spending most games stationed on the right flank, the goals have returned.

“I’m feeling good, really confident and strong, and I can only say I want to keep this form up until the end of the season,” says Kuyt.

The subject of his father’s death is not raised during his afternoon at Woodlands. Most of the patients and staff are unaware of his loss and down-to-earth Dutchness means Kuyt is not going to make an issue of it. He is happy, anyway, leading the football chat.

The older many people become, the less reluctant they appear to be to say what they mean. The questions to Kuyt are more direct than a journalist would dare ask. “Do you like a drink?” (answer: yes, a glass of beer, but Kuyt doesn’t touch alcohol often) is one. “Do you only socialise with the Dutch guys?” (answer: no, he plays golf and goes for meals with Steven Gerrard and others, although Ryan Babel is his roommate on away trips) is another. Brian Hall, the stalwart of Shankly’s early 1970s Liverpool team, who accompanies Kuyt on his visit, gets a cracker. “So, what was the real problem between Emlyn Hughes and Tommy Smith?” An elderly gentleman suggests to Kuyt that footballers’ salaries are so high that ordinary people struggle to accept they are fair.

“I think you’re right,” he says. “We’re on massive wages and sometimes you’re a bit shy when you have that money. But when I step on the pitch I do not think of one penny, I want to win the game. I used to play for nothing. I was still an amateur [at the Dutch side Quick Boys] when I was 17.”

Such an outlook may explain one of the most prodigious workrates in football. Kuyt, a chaser and harrier from first whistle to last, admits: “I never feel tired.” He adds, with reference to his adaptation from striker to right-winger: “I know I’m not Ronaldo or Ronaldinho, not the best dribbler in the world. But I’ve got other things. I know I can score goals and give assists and that my workrate can be important for any team. Workrate is one of the things you always need to show.”

No wonder he is one of Rafael Benitez’s favourite players. The Dutchman’s flexibility is such that Benitez has convinced himself Kuyt even spent time at right-back when he was younger and has mentioned this at press conferences. “No!” says Kuyt, laughing. “I never played right-back, but you never know what might happen.”

Under Benitez he is prepared for anything. The manager still asks him to play as a frontline forward, on occasion, and sometimes as a second striker, and he has even been stationed on the left. “I did play in different roles in Holland,” he says “and what’s important is that, in English football, which is different, I’m now showing I can play every position up front. I’m not really a right-winger but I play the way I like to play it and sometimes, because Steven [Gerrard] and [Fernando] Torres get a lot of attention from opponents, that gives me more space to score goals and make assists.”

He says Liverpool are “a family club, it’s one of the first things you recognise when you arrive. For example, Steven is an absolute star on every pitch in the world he steps on to, but outside the pitch he’s really down to earth. This is the best Liverpool team I’ve been involved in. Winning games like the Manchester United one is a massive step. We’re showing we have the power and strength to win difficult games. We want to show we can win this league”.