Game on

WATCHING the man striding through the tunnel and out on to the pitch, raising his arms aloft to salute the cheers of the fans ringing around the stadium, you could be forgiven for thinking that the FA should have chosen this man as the new England manager.

Screen hard man Ray Winstone - for he is the familiar figure soaking up the approbation of the Premiership football crowd - might have done a great job at motivating the players.

While filming C4's football drama, All In The Game at Coventry's ground, the life-long West Ham fan went into the changing room before the game to meet the players and gave them a pep talk.

"I spoke to the boys about tackles and things - and they won 6-1," says Winstone proudly, wondering if, perhaps, he had something to do with their runaway victory.

He came out on the pitch as Frankie before a real match. "The fans were fantastic because they all went with it and they were cheering and screaming. It was fantastic. I actually thought I was a football manager for a day," he says.

Of course, if the FA had appointed Frankie, the Premiership football manager played by Winstone, they'd have discovered sooner or later that he represented the ugly side of the beautiful game. And I don't just mean the coarseness of his language.

Frankie has got hooked on the big house, big car and big lifestyle that being a successful football manager can buy. He's not averse to bending rules other than the off-side one in order to keep the club successful, aided and abetted by his crooked sports agent son.

Award-winning writer Tony Grounds's one-off drama sees Frankie clash with club chairman George Swaine (played by Roy Marsden) as the two engage in a battle of wills over the direction in which the club should go.

Both Winstone and Grounds are passionate about the game in general and West Ham in particular. "We knock about together, me and Tony, he doesn't live far from me and I understand his dialogue. He understands the way I think, and I understand the way he thinks," says the actor.

"We both support West Ham as that's where we're both from - so it's part of our identity and culture. All In The Game is fiction, but it's based on fact. If we actually made a film about fact, we would probably get sued."

So would Winstone want to be a football manager in real life? "I think every single schoolkid thinks he's a manager. When you get involved you realise you know nothing about the game whatsoever, but just the passion of winning," he says.

"There are clubs people run as complete businesses, but other people put their money into the club because that's what they love. There's that aspect of putting your money and your passion into the hands of someone else. The bigger business becomes, the more people you have working for you and the more people let you down.

"I don't think it's just about football, it's probably about any kind of business in a way, where there's passion involved and it becomes about money. We made a film about football being the backdrop but it could be any sport."

For that reason, he believes All In The Game won't just appeal to football fans. Certainly the celebrity status afforded today's top players extends further than kicking the ball around for 90 minutes a couple of times a week. "As actors we get paid a lot of money when we are working. Footballers are our film stars," he says. "These young lads finish their career at maybe 35 years of age. We actors can go on until we're 70. I don't think anyone is guilty, it's a society thing."

One thing that has changed, he feels, is the loyalty of the fans. " When I was a kid you'd go and watch your local side. I'm just talking about West Ham. You would say, 'I know that kid, he lives down the road to me'. Today, you just go to a football match."

His first memory of football wasn't seeing a game but, as a young kid, "standing at the bottom of my street blowing bubbles as the West Ham team came along on a coach". They'd just won the 1964 FA Cup final against Preston North End.

"The coach didn't even have an upstairs to it, they were just sitting on the roof. Bobby Moore, Martin Peters - they were all there," he recalls.

The TV film was shot at Coventry's ground and clubs like that remind him of West Ham because "they are family-orientated - you have these people at Coventry who have built this new stadium and really mean it".

All In The Game may highlight corruption and deceit in the game but Winstone doesn't want to point the finger at anyone. He doesn't believe it's the film-makers' job to knock anyone in the film. "A lot of them are businessmen who've made their fortune and when it comes to football they lose all that sharp acumen. They make decisions they'd never make in their own business.

"It's the way the world works. The game has changed because of the money. I'm not saying they don't deserve the money."

What Frankie does say is a plethora of four-letter words, causing Winstone to agree that it's probably the most he's ever sworn on TV. The much-married monarch certainly didn't use such language when Winstone portrayed Henry VIII.

The words that come out of Frankie's mouth contain - and I'm indebted to the poor soul at the Radio Times who counted them - 136 uses of the f-word, seven c-words and 15 other swear words.

The actor describes it as "all boys together in the locker room" language, although Ground reports that he had to go through the script with C4 lawyers who insisted on limiting the use of certain words until after 10pm, although the film begins after the 9pm watershed.

There was no censorship of Winstone's naked changing room scene, in which he strips off and showers. Some might find the sight of him in nothing but a jockstrap even more alarming than all the bad language. Never mind his motivation, surely he had his body hair shaved for the scene as he appears as smooth as a baby's bottom.

Apparently not as, he reports, he's not a very hairy person. This seems a very strange conversation to be having but he even elaborates to reveal that the few hairs he has on his chest usually get pulled off when the microphone stuck there for filming is pulled off.

Winstone must have a sore chest as he's one of our busiest actors, both on TV and film. He has three movies - Martin Scorsese's The Departed, Anthony Minghella's Breaking And Entering, and Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf - ready for release and is currently filming a second series of ITV1's private eye drama, Vincent.

He'll complete that in time to go to Germany for the World Cup this summer. "I fancy England to win - but I'm an optimist because I'm a West Ham fan," he says.

* All In The Game: Thursday, C4, 9pm.