Steve Bruce - Early Life

Early Life

Bruce was born in Corbridge in Northumberland, the elder of two sons of Joe and Sheenagh Bruce. Although his father was a local, his mother had been born in Bangor in Northern Ireland. The family lived in Daisy Hill near Wallsend, and Bruce attended Benfield School.

Bruce, a boyhood fan of Newcastle United, claims to have sneaked into St James' Park without paying to watch the team play, saying "I have always been a Newcastle lad and when I was a kid, I crawled under the turnstiles to get in to try and save a bob or whatever it was. They were my team, I went to support them as a boy and being a Geordie it's in-bred, you follow the club still the same today." Like a number of other future professionals from the area, he played football for Wallsend Boys Club. He was also selected for the Newcastle Schools representative team, and at the age of 13 was among a group of players from the team selected to serve as ball boys at the 1974 Football League Cup final at Wembley Stadium.

Having been turned down by a number of professional clubs, including Newcastle United, Sunderland, Derby County and Southport, Bruce was about to start work as an apprentice plumber at the Swan Hunter dockyard when he was offered a trial by Third Division club Gillingham, whose manager Gerry Summers had seen him playing for Wallsend in an international youth tournament. He travelled down to Kent with another player from the Wallsend club, Peter Beardsley, but although Gillingham signed Bruce as an apprentice, they turned Beardsley away. At the time Bruce was playing as a midfielder, but he was switched to the centre of defence by the head of Gillingham's youth scheme, Bill "Buster" Collins, whom Bruce cites as the single biggest influence on his career.