For a large handful of professional footballers, their love for the game extends to the pitch – and just the pitch. They tend to spend their years in retirement spending time with loved ones and winding down from the cut-throat nature of the beautiful game, though there are a few that turn their hand at either punditry or football management. Not Jody Craddock, though.
A total of 9,000 supporters turned up to watch his testimonial at Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Molineux Stadium in 2014 as proceeds from ticket sales were donated to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, where the 50-year-old’s son, Toby, received treatment for Leukaemia.
Craddock’s playing career spanned a total of 21 years between 1992 and 2013, with him turning out for an array of English sides – Cambridge United, Sunderland, Sheffield United, Wolves and Stoke City all included. In 2014, though, he called it quits and hung up his boots for good. But what was next for the centre-back?
|
Jody Craddock – Career Statistics |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Club |
Years |
Games |
Goals |
Assists |
|
Wolves |
2003-2013 |
237 |
17 |
4 |
|
Sunderland |
1997-1999 |
156 |
2 |
0 |
|
Sheffield United |
1999 |
10 |
0 |
0 |
|
Stoke City |
2007 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
|
Cambridge United |
1993-1997 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
Undoubtedly, the highlight of Craddock’s career was when he won the 2008/09 Championship title in 2008/09, but he spent many years – equating to 189 appearances – in the Premier League for Wolves and Sunderland. He downed tools over a decade ago and that’s when he then decided to pursue another passion of his: painting.
Craddock’s Unique Post-Retirement Career
As mentioned, it’s all too familiar for ex-professionals to go down the route of either manning the touchline in a three-piece suit or club gear or delivering analysis before, at half-time and after a match in the studio. Not for Craddock, though, who decided to swap his football boots for a collection of paint brushes.
Helped by the fact he obtained an A-Level in art before taking football more seriously, he followed his hopes and dreams of becoming a professional artist; he now sells artwork on his own website and has had several museums commission his pieces of art.
Prices vary in terms of what it could to pick up a bit of the defender-turned-painter’s pieces. ‘The Molineux Legends’ in A3 size is worth £40, for example, but his more expensive artwork would put a would-be buyer back as much as £2,250, which is the price tag attached to ‘Serenity’, an original oil panting on canvas.
“I could play football and I could paint. It’s all I could do,” Craddock joked, per the BBC as he spoke about his hobby-turned-career in further detail. “I think it’s common knowledge that I’m an artist. That’s what I naturally went into when I retired from football. But I’ve been working on a new identity, which I’ve kept under wraps for the last year. I’d done portraiture for years.”
Once, none other than John Terry drove to Craddock’s home in the Midlands to collect a painting of the English defenders in Chelsea colours. That was a piece commissioned by Terry himself, but the ex-Stoke man has also produced artwork of David Beckham and various other teammates from over the years.
A lovely touch, Wolves – a club he played 237 times for between 2008 and 2009 – the club’s former owner, Sir Jack Hayward, was also a subject of Craddock’s brush. The portrait of the late Hayward is still hung up in the main corridors at Molineux.
In search of a “new identity”, Craddock – who was born in Redditch, Worcestershire – later moved away from painting his former football pals and his new set of photos in 2015 allowed him to do so.
“When I retired, I then experimented with graffiti and photo realism. But I needed something that can be taken seriously, that looks good and that people will look and recognise,” he continued. “There’s not a lot out there that has not already been done, so to think of something original and different was hard.”
Craddock Has Long Had an Eye for Drawing
Getting the paintbrushes out is not new for Craddock. While many will remember his tough-tackling days at Wolves, his career change comes from his inspiring great-great-grandad, who used illustrations – cartoons and doodles – in letters to his wife years ago. “Ever since I can remember I’ve enjoyed drawing,” he said per FourFourTwo.
“Even as a kid, I thought I had a pretty good eye for it. I always thought I took after my dad and granddad in that respect, because they both have a flair for sketching, but I recently discovered that the talent runs even deeper in the family. Letters have been found that my great-great-granddad wrote to his wife more than 100 years ago, and they’re illustrated with the most amazing cartoons and doodles.
“So I guess this love of drawing really is in the blood – only I’ve taken a step further,” before admitting that he first took his talent more seriously during his GCSE coursut, but the insisted that playing football and ensuring that he turned into a profession was his primary ambition.
“My first original painting was an abstract in acrylics which I did as part of my GCSE course. When I left school, football obviously came first, but I continued to paint for my own enjoyment. It had become a passion, albeit not one I really discussed much with other people,” Craddock continued.
“The turning point was when my son Jake died of cot death two years ago. After that, I started painting all the time at home, really throwing myself into it a producing loads of pieces.”
Craddock is not the only former professional to have picked up atypical careers in the post-retirement days. Arjan De Zeeuw became a private detective; Fabio Coentrao is now trying his hand at being a fisherman and the memorable Thomas Gravensen figured that he was half-decent at playing poker, so he took it up professionally.
All statistics per Transfermarkt – correct as of 18/11/2025
About Author
