It is Monday afternoon, the date is 27 February and Chris Brunt has just realised it is a year to the day since he ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee against Crystal Palace, wrecking the Northern Irishman’s hopes of playing at Euro 2016 and bringing an end to a tumultuous week that started with a coin being thrown at him by a West Bromwich Albion fan.
In a strange twist, Palace are back at the Hawthorns on Saturday, only this time there will be no need for the Albion supporters to go out of their way to show their affection for Brunt by holding up banners or rattling buckets to raise money for a charity of his choice, as they did last season.
A man who once divided opinion among some fans – Brunt talks about how he received “dog’s abuse” on Twitter at one stage – is viewed as something of an Albion legend these days as he closes in on 10 years’ service and a possible testimonial, with that coin-throwing incident seen as a watershed moment. “Somebody else can call me a legend if they want to, but I’m definitely not going to,” says Brunt, breaking into laughter at that description.
Signed from Sheffield Wednesday in 2007, Brunt is playing under his seventh Albion manager in Tony Pulis and thriving in a team enjoying a fantastic season. “The club has been a big part of my life. I like the area where I live and the people have always been good to me – the majority of the time,” Brunt says with a smile. “Hopefully they think I’ve contributed while I’ve been here.
“We’ve had a lot of changes of manager, but every one of them keeps putting me in the team nine times out of 10, so I’m doing something right. That’s a big part of the game – you’ve got to be prepared to adapt and move on. The gaffer now has played me in three or four positions – that can happen in one half of one game.”
His record speaks for itself. With 24 goals and 42 assists in 231 top-flight appearances for the club, Brunt has been directly involved in more Premier League goals for Albion than any other player. He has also fulfilled just about every role on the pitch and even finished one game this season at right-back. Ask Brunt his position and the 32-year-old looks totally flummoxed. “I’ve absolutely no idea,” he replies, laughing. “I just put the shirt on and get on with it.”
As well as being versatile and blessed with a superb left foot that makes him Albion’s go-to man when it comes to set pieces, Brunt is a modest, intelligent and likable bloke. All of which made that ugly incident involving the coin after an FA Cup defeat at Reading last season seem even worse, especially as he was walking over to applaud Albion’s supporters at the time.
“There were a lot of Albion fans there that day,” Brunt says. “The FA Cup means a lot to the club because of our history – it’s the last time we won a trophy, in 1968 – and when you’re talking about legends before, it’s people like Tony Brown and Bobby Hope that the fans from back then look on in that way.
“We didn’t play well at Reading and deserved to go out, but it’s always important to show a bit of appreciation for the fans. Whether they’re happy or not is irrelevant; you need to show respect for people that have travelled. I remember there were a couple of kids at the front so I went to chuck my shirt over and then one thing led to another.”
Brunt was struck just below the eye and his reaction was a mixture of incredulity and anger. He picked up the coin, held it in front of the Albion fans and demanded to know who was responsible. “It was very much a case of wrong place at the wrong time,” he says. “I was angry. If I had got my hands on somebody it would have been a lot different – I’d probably have spent the night in a cell in Reading.”
He laughs as he makes that last comment and, looking back, wonders whether the storm that the incident caused at the time was a welcome distraction in one respect. “It took the emphasis off how bad the performance was – I definitely took one for the team that day,” Brunt says, smiling.
“What happened afterwards was great – the response of the fans, they made a few quid for charity, throwing coins in a bucket rather than throwing coins at my head. It’s just one mindless idiot that gave the fans a bad name that afternoon and I know, as well as everyone else does, that West Brom fans aren’t like that.”
There was another, far more devastating, blow around the corner. The following Saturday against Palace, when fans rallied behind him and the club put his picture on the front of the programme above the word “loyalty”, Brunt should have been the hero. Instead he fell awkwardly after a challenge with Wilfried Zaha and left the pitch on a stretcher. “The feeling was that bad that as soon as I went down I knew that the Euros were out of the question,” he says.
A scan the following morning confirmed cruciate ligament damage. “I was sitting in the house on my own when I got the phone call,” Brunt says. “It wasn’t a nice call to have, but it was probably harder telling everyone else. I phoned my wife, who was out at a birthday party with the children, told her what happened and had to hang up. Then I phoned my mum and dad and had to hang up on them as well.”
With Northern Ireland looking forward to playing at their first major tournament since 1986, and Brunt having represented his country for more than a decade with so little reward, the timing of the injury was desperately cruel. “That was the hardest part about it,” he says. “I’ve had some tough times playing for Northern Ireland, individually and with results, too. I made my debut when I was 19, back in 2004, so you go through a lot of qualifying campaigns and get very little back, whereas that Euro 2016 campaign was really enjoyable. But that’s life. What happened to me has happened to many people.”
Brunt had surgery in France and accepted an invitation from Michael O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s manager, to join the squad at the Euros, where he continued his rehabilitation as a committed but frustrated spectator. It was a long, gruelling road back, with all the hard work Brunt put in best captured by a fascinating graphic that Albion released just after he returned to fitness in October. By that stage they calculated Brunt had lifted the equivalent of 40 elephants, completed 10 triathlons, stood on one leg for a month and spent 17 days icing his knee.
“I suppose that gave some people on the outside a bit of an insight into what you have to go through to get back on the pitch. People away from the club only see a matchday, and if you’re they’re on a Saturday you’re fit, if you’re not you’re no use to anyone – to be fair, that’s what the gaffer says,” Brunt says, smiling.
After making two substitute appearances in October, Brunt has started every Premier League game since, which shows how highly Pulis regards him. He is not, however, the teacher’s pet or son of, to borrow the nickname that footballers often give to the manager’s favourite. “I really don’t think the gaffer has a ‘son of’ – he’s not affectionate enough for that sort of thing, not with any of his players anyway,” says Brunt.
Pulis is too focused on getting the best out of an experienced group of players who have already hit 40 points – they have won seven out of their past eight top-flight games at home – and are on course to break the club’s Premier League record. Another 10 points will do the job. “We’re pretty freeflowing goal-wise at the moment and every time we step out on the pitch at The Hawthorns we feel like we can win the game,” Brunt says.
It is a good time to be at Albion and easy to see why Brunt signed a new contract last month, tying him to the club until 2018 with the promise of another year on top if he completes a certain number of appearances. Either way, Brunt looks certain to complete a decade at Albion in the summer, along with James Morrison, who joined eight days before him, raising the prospect of a joint testimonial.
“There’s nothing concrete, but there’s been mention of that and if the club wanted to do something, then I’m sure the two of us would listen, because it would be nice to give something back to some charities,” Brunt says. “Testimonials aren’t something you hear about much nowadays because people don’t tend to stay at clubs that often. That either means we’ve both done all right, or they just couldn’t get rid of us when they were trying to!”
