Over the course of a 13-year professional career, Jimmy Bullard appeared for 8 different clubs across the English football league system. Due to a contractual misprint, the most lucrative stint of his professional career came during his time with Hull City.
Bullard was well known for his instantly recognizable blonde mane, his hilarious on-field antics and for his admission of taking a “wee-wee” in a teammates aftershave bottle that he then continued to use all yearlong.
Bullard retired in 2012 after a series of serious injuries, including rupturing his cruciate ligaments twice in three years. However, Bullard has now risked the ire of his former club Hull City by revealing the terms of a contract he signed with the Tigers in 2009.
After transferring from Fulham to Hull City for £5 million, then a record transfer fee for Hull, Bullard sat down to negotiations expecting to sign a four-and-a-half-year deal worth an agreed upon figure of £40,000 per week.
However, a misprint in the contract result in Bullard signing a contract which, up until the present, has “changed his life”.
The mistake saw him sign a contract worth £55,000 per week, an unexpected raise of £15,000 ($21,000) per week. “I saw on the paperwork it said £50,000 so I’ve passed it under the table to my agent and my agent’s gone: ‘Yeah, that’s a misprint, sign it’,” revealed Bullard.
“As I signed it I blew it dry and then I read under it as well, another £5,000 or £6,000 in appearance [money].” Needless to say, Bullard as his agent were delighted.
A year and a half later, Bullard was suspended by Hull City for a breach of the club’s alcohol policy during preseason training camp in Slovenia. His contract was then terminated, only for a court to later rule that Hull City had done so unlawfully.
Bullard was able to collect on his four-and-a-half-year deal, at £55,000 per week, while making only 23 appearances for Hull City in a year-and-a-half with the Tigers.
“I’m celebrating to this day,” claims Bullard. “Thank you Hull City for changing my life. I’m dropping cash everywhere, I’m bleeding cash.”
Bullard’s decision to go public with this news defies common sense, but little of what Bullard does ever qualifies as conventional.
— Jimmy Bullard (@jimmybullard) February 14, 2016
