This week’s episode of A-Leagues All Access centres on former Premier League defender and current Newcastle Jets co-captain Carl Jenkinson. Watch the full episode below.
Steve Jenkinson calls them “all of our yesterdays”: the priceless family moments captured in print photos, sprawled in front of him and his wife Hayde on the kitchen table.
Together, Steve and Hayde sift through one photo after another. The first is of their son, Carl Jenkinson, and his older brother. A happy memory of siblings crouched in the backyard holding trophies aloft.
“He’s got a lot to thank his brother for,” Steve Jenkinson says. “He undoubtedly brought Carl on, because he’s two years older than him.”
The next picture he pulls from the pile, however, is attached to the memory of “one of the worst days of Carl’s life.”
“I think he’d still say (that) until today,” Steve says.
The photo is of Carl and childhood friend, Sam Gent. “They’ve been friends since they were about five years of age,” he adds.
Together, they grew up trying to make their shared footballing dreams come true.
At seven years of age, Jenkinson’s dream kicked on to greater heights. It was a moment at a Charlton Athletic trial in 1999, that led the eventual Arsenal signing to find his destined home at full-back.
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“He joined Chalrton Athletic and was initially was playing in midfield,” recalls Steve.
“Jonjo Shelvey joined the team as well, (who) everyone knows as well is a midfielder, and Carl got moved out to the right-hand side.
“That was Sam’s position. He took Sam’s position, and played on the right, and Sam didn’t get in the team.
“I always remember he turned up on a Wednesday night training with (academy head) Steve Avery at Charlton, and he wouldn’t talk. He was upset, he was half-crying and everything else.
“Even Steve came across and said: ‘Carl (isn’t) himself, why isn’t he?’ And I said: ‘Why? He’s got feelings. That’s his best mate, and he’s just (taken) his place in the team’.
“(Avery said): ‘I didn’t realise that. But hey ho, that’s football’.
“And that’s what football’s like: one day you’re in the team, one day you’re out of the team. One day you’re in favour, one day you’re not.”
Jenkinson is the star of this week’s episode of A-Leagues All Access, titled Away From Home. It charts the Englishman’s rise from a seven-year-old at Charlton Athletic to securing a dream move to Arsenal in 2011 – the club he supported as a child.
More than a decade on from his first contract at the Gunners, the Englishman is based in the Hunter region of New South Wales, co-captaining Newcastle Jets through the 2022-23 Isuzu UTE A-League season and adjusting to his new life abroad.
“Genty” did not earn a spot in the Charlton youth setup; but as the episode begins, the two friends are alongside one another in Sydney, with the former visiting his childhood friend Down Under more than two decades on from that trial in 1999.
Since his arrival in Australia last year, Jenkinson has slowly become accustomed to Australian life; in a FaceTime with former Gunners teammate Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain caught on All Access, he spends considerable time schooling the now-Liverpool midfielder on Australian “lingo”, beginning with the definition of a schooner.
It’s a long way from the bright lights of the Emirates, where, on and off for eight years, Jenkinson toiled to make his dream move to his boyhood club a success.
Jenkinson was signed to play for Arsenal by Arsene Wenger; in 2012, he took his place in a famous photo of the legendary manager standing over British quintet Jenkinson, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Keiran Gibbs and Oxlade-Chamberlain as they put pen to paper on long-term contract extension, and dubbed Arsenal’s ‘British core’.
“I grew up in an Arsenal house, my whole family were Arsenal fans,” Jenkinson tells All Access. “(I’m) 19, playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world. Just to have the backing of Arsene Wenger, the guy of that calibre in the game to rate you as a player and want you at his club (was incredible).”
His spell at Arsenal was spent predominantly as backup to Bacary Sagna at right-back – a role he revelled in, “learning so much from him, training with him and watching him play off the bench.”
But eventually, Jenkinson’s hunger to play regular minutes outweighed his keen approach to the role of the understudy.
In the end, opportunity knocked at a rival Premier League club.
WATCH A-LEAGUES ALL ACCESS EPISODE 18: AWAY FROM HOME
Produced by KEEPUP Studios and JAMTV, each new episode of the docuseries will debut on Thursday at 7:30pm AEDT on 10 Play, KEEPUP.COM.AU, the KEEPUP app. It will be available on Australia’s fastest growing streaming service, Paramount+, and will then be broadcast on 10 Bold at 2:00pm AEDT on Sunday afternoons as an appetiser for the evening’s Isuzu UTE A-League Men game on the same channel.
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