Charlie Austin: ‘I’m having a hell of a season, yeah, great. But Harry Kane has scored 29’The QPR striker says playing for England is his next big career goal but his immediate priority is to help his club stay in the Premier League 
Charlie Austin: 'I would like to say I’ve done enough to not forget about [the bricklaying], but to be recognised as a footballer.'
Charlie Austin looks out of the window at Queens Park Rangers’ training ground and points across the empty pitches stretching into the distance as he tries to do justice to the scale of Michael Owen’s Manor House Stables in Cheshire, where he recently paid a visit and was blown away by everything he took in. “Owen’s gaff, it’s just massive,” Austin says, puffing out his cheeks.
An invitation from Owen was not something that Austin was going to turn down. The two share a mutual love of horse racing as well as a natural instinct for scoring goals and it takes little time in Austin’s company to realise just how passionate he is about a sport that has turned into much more than a hobby for Owen and could do the same for the QPR striker in the future.
“Michael invited me up there just into the new year and it was a real eye-opener,” Austin says. “I don’t think people realise how big a training yard is with the gallops. At somewhere like Lambourn [in Berkshire], everyone has got their yard plotted about and then they’ve got gallops where they would have to go 500-1,000 metres up the road. But Michael Owen has everything on site, you’re talking more than 100 acres. It was great to see it all and for me to be in the presence of a striker of his calibre.”
It was Austin’s grandfather, Alistair, who first got him interested in racing at the age of 15, around the time he was rejected by Reading for being too small. He remembers thinking how exciting it would be to own a racehorse one day, never imagining for one moment that a decade later he would be experiencing that thrill while playing in the Premier League.
“People ask me what it’s like scoring a goal,” says Austin. “Well, think of the best thing that could happen to you and times it by 10. Sometimes people say to me that I celebrate over the top, but when you score, the emotion … you just can’t control it. It’s the same with owning a horse that wins.”
Austin smiles as he thinks back to a “mad” fortnight across October and November last year, when Miss Sophierose, one of his horses, won at Worcester and everything clicked on the pitch. “We played Aston Villa on the Monday, I got two and was man of the match, Sophie ran on the Wednesday and won, I scored against Chelsea on the Saturday – unfortunately we lost 2-1 – and then I played out of my skin in a 2-2 draw against Man City. On a personal note, that’s as good as it gets,” he says, laughing.
Together with Paul Fisher – his business partner – he has formed a syndicate called Excel Racing, which has six horses, and it is measure of how well connected Austin is in the industry that Tony McCoy was among the guests in his corporate box for Arsenal’s visit to Loftus Road last month.
“I’ve known Tony for about three years now,” Austin says. “I was friends with a load of flat jockeys. Obviously he’s a jump jockey, our paths crossed and the following year I owned a racehorse, Interior Minister, and asked him if he’d ride it for me – and the relationship went from there.
“I knew Tony was an Arsenal fan, so I asked if he wanted to come to the Arsenal game at QPR. Fortunately for my family he was able to and he was in the box with them on what was the week before Cheltenham. For me, he’s the greatest. People might look at him and think he’s grumpy but when you’re in his company, he’s such a nice bloke.”
The only disappointment was that McCoy went home happiest that night, despite the fact that Austin scored his 15th Premier League goal of the season. The 2-1 loss against Arsenal is one of nine defeats in QPR’s last 10 league matches, leaving them four points adrift of safety ahead of two crucial away trips in the space of four days. QPR take on West Bromwich Albion, against whom Austin scored a hat-trick earlier in the season, on Saturday and travel to Aston Villa on Tuesday. “You look at those two games and you think we need to get four to six points,” he says.
Austin reflects on the season so far with mixed emotions. While there is no escaping his disappointment that QPR are at the wrong end of the table, the 25-year-old is entitled to take great satisfaction from being the fourth highest goalscorer in the Premier League in his first season in top flight football. Only Diego Costa, Harry Kane and Sergio Agüero have scored more. “It’s quite surreal because I couldn’t have dreamed to be in the mix with people like that,” he says.
The QPR striker Charlie Austin says he has England ambitions but accepts that Tottenham’s Harry Kane is ahead in the pecking order. Photograph: Martin Godwin for The Guardian
Not that he wants to harp back to the days when he went to work with a trowel. While still in touch with the people who were there at the start of his remarkable journey from the Wessex League – Tom Killick, his manager at Poole Town, was also invited to the Arsenal game and went home chuffed to bits that Austin got him Santi Cazorla’s shirt – there is a feeling that, after scoring 105 league goals in the last six seasons for Swindon Town, Burnley and QPR, all that talk about laying bricks is a little outdated.
“I did an in-house interview with me and Les Ferdinand [QPR’s director of football] and the question came up about me being a bricklayer,” Austin says. “Les interrupted, took the question and said: ‘Look, I think we’re past all that, he’s done enough in football now to be known as a professional footballer.’ So I would like to say I’ve done enough to not forget about [the bricklaying], but to be recognised as a footballer.”
The fact that Austin has been talked about for a possible England call-up is testament to just how far he has come. Playing for his country, Austin says, is his next goal and there is not the slightest trace of bitterness that Kane got a chance ahead of him in the recent internationals and made such an impact, scoring 79 seconds after coming on against Lithuania.
“I saw the first goal, missed the next two and then flicked it on in the second half. I thought: ‘He must come on now.’ And do you know what, I was genuinely delighted he scored,” Austin says. “[Daniel] Sturridge, if he’s fit, has to be called up, the same with Rooney and [Danny] Welbeck, so there is one slot. And one slot in my eyes – and this is not me trying to win sympathy – is Harry Kane. How could you not pick him?
“I’m having a hell of a season, yeah, great. But the guy has scored 29 goals. Eden Hazard has had a great season, don’t get me wrong, but I voted for Harry Kane to win Young Player of the Year and the main award. I don’t think we can not give it to him. He’s been the outstanding player.”
Quick to tweet about Kane being on fire – complete with flame emojis – when the Tottenham Hotspur striker scored against Lithuania, Austin was taken to task on Twitter by Joey Barton, his QPR team-mate, the following morning for his “horrific” dress sense after he appeared on Soccer AM. Asked whether he has any response to Barton’s comments, Austin replies: “I haven’t actually. I’ll just let sleeping dogs lie.”
After an inauspicious start, Austin and Barton have hit it off together. “My first day, I came to the training ground within 45 minutes of signing and I was waiting for the security barrier to lift when he came out. I thought: ‘That’s Joey Barton.’ He looked at me, just got in his car and drove off. I thought: ‘Brilliant, here we go!’ To be fair to him, he came in the next day, shook my hand and said it wasn’t until he got home that he knew I had signed. The following day he invited me and Bianca, my wife-to-be, out to dinner and from then until now we’ve been close mates.”
Austin is optimistic that their friendship will continue in the Premier League with QPR next season, even if the odds are stacked against Chris Ramsey’s side and their position appears perilous. “There’s belief. We’re not coming into training all doom and gloom,” Austin says. “I really want to be part of something special here in the next eight games and I know, with the group of lads we’ve got, there’s a hell of a chance to stay in the Premier League.”
Guardian
