Interview: Injured and without a club, but Kevin Kyle is determined to prolong his playing career

I’d anticipated being entertained, hilariously, like all those times when a post-match radio or TV mic was aimed at his grinning Stranraer mug. And I had no right to expect this, as if he was some performing seal landed by one of the ferries he used to work – especially not after the ordeal he’s been through.

After a fourth operation on his troublesome hip, not playing for almost 16 months, cancelling his contract with Hearts and with another game of football nowhere on the horizon, he was bound to be more subdued because he was no longer, every day, walking into a bantersome dressing room, filling it with his looming 6ft 3ins presence and even more jokes and wind-ups. He wasn’t going to say anything funny, I’d decided, and he wasn’t going to say anything controversial. But guess what? ...

He reckons footballers, quite a lot of them anyway, are “choobs”. He describes Hibs’ performance in Sunday’s derby defeat by his old club as “horrendous”. He starts sentences with “I’m bound by a confidentiality agreement so maybe I shouldn’t say this, but ... ” And then he tells you anyway. And we’ve only been going for a few minutes and most of this comes while he’s shouting through from the other room as he changes his 15-month-old son Harry’s nappy and feeds him from a bottle.

We’ll return to all of these issues soon but first let’s get some insight into the life of the footballer who’s between clubs but isn’t done yet. Kyle, 31, is at home in Cumbernauld a fair bit, looking after Harry while his fiancee, Lynn, teaches part-time at a local primary. He loves his golf, has promised he’ll tackle the drainage issue in the back garden some time soon, and is engrossed by quality telly dramas, like the conspiracy thriller Homeland. And he waits for Kilmarnock physio Alex McQueen – “an expert at hip rehabs” – to finish the day job so he can pop round and continue helping the ten-times-capped striker get ready for his comeback.

Oh, and there’s also a wedding to plan. “Stag do first,” he chuckles. “Me and 18 of the lads are off to Magaluf. I used to go there all the time when I was at Sunderland but since meeting Lynn I’ve not been allowed back. Then it’s Dunblane Hydro on 25 May for the wedding, Florida for the honeymoon and, when I get back, hopefully the phone will start ringing and I can get playing again.”

Kyle tells you everything. Discussing dadhood and how much he loves it – he also has a seven-year-old son, Max, from a previous relationship – he says he and Lynn will try for another baby, “probably on the honeymoon”, and I’m wondering how detailed he’s going to get here. He tells you everything, indeed, apart from how much money he blew in his well-publicised addiction to gambling.

“I hate to think what it was,” he says, puffing out his cheeks. “But my gambling was horrendous and it’s still with me and I think it always will be. I’ve been asked many times by TV and radio to talk about my addiction to help others but I don’t feel ready to do that when I’m not completely cured myself. I’ve done some daft things in my life and gambling is obviously one of them. Now, with the family and everything, I worry about the future because I haven’t looked after the money I made from the game. I couldn’t afford to retire, even if I wanted to, so it’s just as well I don’t and that I’m determined to keep playing.”

Last week, Kyle was at a darts event at Glasgow’s SECC as a guest of Sky, one of a number of broadcasters currently inviting him to try out punditry should the – still, for him – unthinkable happen and he has to hang up his boots. “My wee brother was there, too, and he was amazed at the number of people who came up and said hello. He told me I was probably the best-known footballer in Scotland outside the Old Firm which, if it’s true, is pretty nice and you might as well milk that.”

It’s pretty obvious why he appeals to TV. As a player, he hasn’t had the personality drained out of him, deciding early to shun media-tutoring. He gives good quotes, sometimes too good. “I know that now and again I’ve shouted my mouth off, said the wrong things, and it does make Lynn cringe. Cannae help it, though.” He’s got a back-story you’d have to euphemistically call “interesting”: the English Premiership at 17, tabloid revelations about his love life, the odd scrape with the law, community service helping Down’s syndrome kids. Then there’s the debate about the kind of footballer he is. A medieval battering ram, say some – “an old-fashioned centre-forward just delighted to be getting a game,” according to the man himself. Don’t forget his short but eventful Scotland career, the heavy defeats by Wales and South Korea plus the draw-but-felt-like-a-tanking with the Faroes. What tales he has to tell! And all of them delivered in that odd Stranraer lilt. “But I can’t think about telly, or coaching, which does interest me,” he continues, “because I refuse to stop calling myself a player. The last year and a bit has been a shock to me and I’m still in it. I’m not yet ready to contemplate the next stage and, if you like, the real world.”

He replays the fateful moment from the first day of 2011 and the New Year derby against Hibs at Tynecastle. “There was a throw-in around the half-hour mark, I laid the ball off, turned and ... ouch. I didn’t think it was my bad hip. After six years of it being okay I’d forgotten those pains. So I took an injection at half-time because I didn’t want to come off, no way, the adrenaline was really pumping.” Almost inevitably, Kyle would score the winner in the last minute. Hearts were title-contenders at that stage but when their talisman was unable to play any more, their challenge quickly faded.

Kyle didn’t undergo that fourth operation until 11 April, almost three and a half months later, and another aspect of the immediate aftermath worries him. “The treatment I got at Hearts, in terms of physio, I couldn’t agree with. I was never truly confident with it.” He doesn’t want to criticise Hearts, a great club where he loved playing and may yet feature again. He’s obviously no medical expert and admits to probably Googling too many photos of problem hips to make comparisons. But he does know his own body, having carted it from Cambridge to France, Germany, America and back to Bradford in search of a cure. Alex McQueen, from Kyle’s time at Rugby Park, knows it too, and the player is grateful to Hearts for letting him seek help from outside.

Ask most players what they’re like as spectators when sidelined and they’ll simply say they’re not very good at just watching. Put the question to Kevin Kyle and he doesn’t hold back. “I was going to the Hearts games home and away, well apart from up at Inverness, but after a 0-0 draw at St Mirren I thought: I can’t do this any more and I don’t know how the punters can either at £20-plus a time. It wasn’t that the football was especially bad, but I’d like to think that, if I’d been playing, someone would have done something to give the fans cause to cheer, even if it was whacking an opponent or a stupid thing.”

This football week has thrown up a few dramas demanding a comment from our man, including of course, Kilmarnock’s triumph in the Scottish Communities League Cup. He says: “I didn’t see the final because I was working for Sky at the Edinburgh derby but I was checking my phone every five minutes and really chuffed with the result because all the chat had been about Celtic’s treble. And, aye, I suppose I did wonder to myself how, if I’d stayed at Killie and still been captain, that could have been me lifting the trophy.”

So was he also envious of Craig Beattie when the new, big, rumbustious guy up front for Hearts was anointed the derby hero? “Well, he’s not as big as me, but he’s come back to the SPL from England with a point to prove, just like I did, and he’s what Hearts have missed since I got injured. I have to say, though, that I don’t think I’ve seen a more gutless, effortless, spineless performance in a derby as Hibs turned in on Sunday. If I was a fan I’d be fuming – and very worried. My old gaffer, Jim Jefferies, who’s just taken over at Dunfermline, would like nothing better than to send Hibs down.”

Being out of the game, hopefully temporarily, it’s the tussles with Hibs he misses most. “Some guys go through their whole careers not playing in derbies so I count myself lucky having had a wee taste. My first was at Easter Road and I remember thinking beforehand: I’ve got the chance to help send half this city delirious – wow! We won 2-0 and on the bus journey back across the city, up Leith Walk where the Hibbies were down in the dumps, onto Princes Street where the Jambos were ecstatic, the driver played the ‘Hearts, Glorious Hearts’ song. I joined in the singing without really knowing how it went: ‘H-E-A ... R-B-S.’ Well, the Royal Bank of Scotland is an Edinburgh institution, too!”

Still high on the derby experience, the then-crocked Kyle watched from deep in the away end back at Easter Road, and afterwards offered Sportsound a fan’s perspective with his usual breathless vim. “I loved watching from the stands almost as much as being out on the pitch and having coins, lighters and Smirnoff miniatures hurled at me. When I speak to fans they’re like mates. I know a lot of players who’ve been choobs to the random punter, just after a friendly chat. You don’t do that. You’ve got to remember how fortunate you are being a footballer – I used to chuck bags onto the ferry – I know I am.”

An old-fashioned centre-forward, he repeats, with a respect for the captain’s armband that these days is almost quaint. “I’d like to think that if hadn’t been for the injury I’d have made it to skipper at Hearts, which would have been fantastic. I remember Niall Quinn, my drinking buddy when he played at Sunderland saying to me when he came back as chairman that he was disappointed this big 17-year-old who’d come down from Scotland thinking he knew everything wasn’t by that stage running the show. ‘You’ve got great captain potential,’ he said.”

Captain at Killie, he was a leader at Tynecastle from day one. “First day at training, Suso Santana and Ruben Palazuelos were mucking about not giving a hoot and I said: ‘Any chance of you two doing this properly?’ They must have thought, Kyle’s just in the door – who does he think he is? Every morning the foreigners would go off and play keep-ball and the Scots would sit around and, I dunno, talk about birds and what they were doing at the weekend. I thought, are there two separate teams here? I went up to all these guys ending in ‘-unkas’ or whatever and asked for a game. It was two touches, no heading, and if you lost two lives you stood there while the others flicked your lug. Needless to say that happened to me a few times but I think I bridged the gap and help the team to bond.”

Did Vladimir Romanov ever flick his lug? “Ha ha, well, I only met him once. We’d won ten out of 11, drawing the other, but hadn’t received a single bonus and then lost the next game 4-0 to Celtic. He came into the dressing-room and it was like we were POWs and he was the camp commandant. ‘This result not acceptable,’ he said through his interpreter, ‘to get bonus need to try harder.’” And the never-backwards Kyle didn’t challenge him? “This may sound strange, but there are times when I do actually button it!”

He’s desperate to resume playing. “And I do believe that a fit, healthy, confident Kevin Kyle will still get a game in the SPL.” A cheeky, funny and occasionally outrageous one would be good value, too. But until the phone starts ringing with offers the only call he’s answering is the one coming from upstairs. Harry’s crying again ...