Claridge still proving that class and character are greater than caricature

Behind the stereotype is a role model. Jason Burt meets a long player who is far from the perceived journeyman

If, as expected, Steve Claridge is offered another year's contract at Millwall it will, late into his thirties, be the longest he has stayed at one club. Just three years.

Playing for the south Londoners is, in many ways, an ideal match, and one that Claridge is well aware of. "It is pretty much along the same lines as myself. I see a lot in the club that I see in myself," he says. Ah, image. Claridge does not quite have the "no one likes us, we don't care" attitude of many Millwall fans but he knows that he has had a reputation that, in the past, undoubtedly hampered his career.

"The football grapevine is very quick to get round," he says. "But you have to judge as you find." Sitting two tables away in the canteen at Millwall's modest training ground in Bromley, south-east London, is Dennis Wise. "He is a perfect example," says Claridge, pointing to the man sacked by Leicester City after a fracas. "He has a terrible reputation but he is a top boy. Great bloke. I could not speak more highly of him, totally different from his reputation.

"I would like to think the same of me. I like to have a laugh and a joke but I have worked very hard and it has taken me a long time to get rid of my reputation." Take football reporters. "Too many come with a preconceived idea of what I am like," he says, with an air of annoyance. "I can tell from the questions I am asked." He is right. Checking the newspaper cuttings on Claridge usually reveals the same anecdotes about being a bit of a geezer, a joker, gambling, squandering signing-on fees in one afternoon and sleeping rough. "I did some stupid things that have been so well documented," he says.

Despite a career that has taken him to 13 clubs, and brought more than 300 goals, he was only briefly a Premiership player, while with Martin O'Neill's Leicester City, although he still finished up among the Shearers and Coles in the scoring charts. Again, he believes, it is image that probably prevented him from staying there and making a big move to a Manchester United or a Liverpool.

"Could I have coped? I know I could have," he says. "Maybe my reputation preceded me. Although I have put that in the past, there are many clubs who have said that they would have taken a chance on me but..." His voice trails away. "I just did not get that break when I probably should have."

Still, 17 clubs tried to sign him before he went to Millwall, although he has never regretted going to the New Den. He will be there on Wednesday, back among the big boys. An FA Cup replay, against Southampton, live on television. And don't forget it was top scorer Claridge, in the middle of the kind of hot streak he usually enjoys at this time of year, who got the goal that should have won the first game.

Unsurprisingly, the recent debate over football and gambling exercises him. "So I have a bet. Does that mean I'm a bad person? The only people who are upset about Michael Owen are the ones who have suddenly realised he has got a personality and they still haven't. No one cares. Tell me one decent bloke who is bothered by it."

What Claridge is bothered by is the constant attachment of his name to such descriptions as "workhorse" and "journeyman". It is a disservice and something that perhaps motivates him to carry on as he approaches his 37th birthday in two months' time. "I just want to continue to prove people wrong," he says.

Talk of retirement also reveals a determination that has driven Claridge through a career that started "at the bottom" and variously worked its way up. "I tell you what. I will carry on playing until the day that someone stops asking me when am I going to finish," he says.

"I feel great, really good. I cannot over-emphasise that. I have always been fit, naturally fit. I have to do more now to keep in shape but I eat better, I sleep better, I live better."

The "penny dropped" for Claridge when he was 27 and he went to an army camp for pre-season training while with the erratic John Beck at Cambridge United. "I stayed there for a week and I went from living on pizzas and not sleeping and eating properly to eating three square meals a day," he says. "I was lucky, because many people at 27 would have done a lot of damage to their bodies if they lived their lives the way I had, but I was fortunate that I got a second chance." He grasped it. "No one has ever given me anything in football, if someone said to me who was your greatest influence in football I would say me. And that is why I am prepared to work that little bit harder to stay there."

Although he rejects the idea of retirement, Claridge knows it will come. And, after a period of "chilling out", he would like to have a crack at management – despite suffering a three-month "baptism of fire" while player-manager of Portsmouth, his beloved home-town team, prior to joining Millwall.

His heart is still with the south-coast club – although he did not get a warm reception when he returned there. "Well, I like to think it is like when you break up with someone and they still quite like you. Someone said to me that there are lesser players who have gone back and got a round of applause and yet I got roundly booed. "I think it is because they still think that (a) I can threaten; and (b) I should still be there. I'm looking at it that way, anyway," he says, before joking: "Either that or I'm not very well liked."

It was a love affair that, in 1998, hampered his time at Wolverhampton Wanderers. "That was a great move," he says. "I was just the right man at the wrong time. It was as simple as that. And I didn't want to be there because I wanted to be at Portsmouth, where I had been on loan."

Still, it was at Wolves that he came as close as he has been to FA Cup glory – a semi-final against Arsenal in only his second game. Win on Wednesday, and beat Norwich City in the next round, and suddenly unfashionable Millwall are into the last eight.

And yet the image is hard to shake. One thing to look out for on Wednesday will be Claridge with his socks rolled down, a trademark and one most referees ignore. Again, it is not something that he wants to discuss – in case anyone thinks it is a joke. For now, Steve Claridge wants it to be his football that is talked about.