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Sunday Mirror - Jason Roberts Praise for Holloway
February 26, 2006
Jason Roberts had his career turned round on a muddy, miserable afternoon of swearing, shouting and personal insults.The giant striker's career hits a new high today when he leads Wigan into their first major final. And he's got there thanks to a lot of hard work - and a bit of brutal bullying by former boss Ian Holloway.
Roberts is one of the graduates of Holloway's amazing Premiership centre-forward school that has also groomed West Ham's Bobby Zamora, West Brom's Nathan Ellington and Liverpool's giant Peter Crouch.It was Holloway who rescued Roberts when he was failing in the reserves at Wolves and then nurtured his raw talent. Holloway said: "Jason was all raw pace, power and hunger with a great desire to get better but a burning anger that he couldn't live up to his family reputation."
Everywhere he went he was compared to his uncle Cyrille Regis, and at 15 or 16 he even stopped playing altogether because he couldn't deal with it." When we signed him at Bristol Rovers my No.2 Gary Penrice, who had been a striker himself, explained his problem was that because of all that was in his head he couldn't focus."Gary used to try to put him off during shooting practice and suddenly Jason started ignoring him and nearly everything he hit went in."He hasn't looked back and nobody will be more proud than me to see him walk out for a Cup final this weekend."
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