Age: 29
Arild's Football Career Thus Far.....
by Lee Wilson
Arild began playing football from the early age of 7, with his "motherclub," Clausenengen. This remarkable club, from a town of around 17,000 people, have also reared such talent as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (Man Utd), Oyvind Leonhardsen (Spurs) and Trond Andersen (Wimbledon). It was here Arild stayed until the age of 19 when he headed south to Brann Bergen in 1991.
In December of 1993, Arild moved to a then Norwegian 1st Division side, Molde. It was there in 1994 where he won his first honour as a footballer, when the side lifted the Norwegian Cup. Molde also won promotion that year. Also in 94, Arild won his two full international caps for Norway.In 1996, Stavrum then moved on to Stabaek (located just outside the Capital, Oslo). Then in April of 1998, he moved to Helsingborg IF in Sweden. Here he spent a very succesful two seasons, winning the Cup in '98, and the League Championship in '99, finishing top scorer in the country in both campaigns.
In November of 1999, Arild sacrificed Champions League football to join the Ebbe Skovdahl revolution at Aberdeen. Despite having played a full season in Sweden, Arild went on to score 12 goals in the remainder of the season as the club reached two cup finals (which we lost to both of the Old Firm teams). One thing we all want to forget about, was the bottom place in the league, and being saved from relegation by the poor condition of another team's stadium.
Season 2000/2001 was a mixed season for Arild. Injury and Illness kept him out of the 1st team from August until November. Even with this horrible luck, Arild went on to score 17 goals for Aberdeen, a tally bettered by no-one at the club and only Henrik Larsson in the country. The team finished 7th in the SPL with a vastly improved performance from the previous years'.
In July 2001, shocked Aberdeen fans opened their newspapers to find pictures such as the one shown above, Arild posing in the Besitkas strip. Our top scorer had taken advantage of a clause in his contract allowing him to leave if he so desired, for a cut-price fee. So Arild has left and so this story enters a new chapter.
To be continued..............
Thanks to Kevin Stirling of Dons Matchday Magazine and Dave MacDiarmid at AFC for premitting the reproduction of this article.This was an interview with Stavrum from the match program for the Rangers game on the 12th November 2000. He was just on his way back from an injury which had sidelined him for nearly 3 months.
It must have been a frustrating time for you recently?
It most certainly has. I've been quite fortunate in my football career in that I've been reasonably healthy and managed to steer clear of injury. However, I've not had the most enjoyable season so far and the back injury has been very frustrating. I thought I had overcome all that when I came on in the second half of the Dunfermline game but incredibily, I then picked up the flu! Hopefully I am over all that now and I can get back playing regularly.
To be fair, the strikers had being doing welll until recently in your absence, hadn't they?
Yes, I think Robbie (Winters) in particular has been playing very well and it's only in the last few games that the goals have dried up for him. I'm sure that Robbie, however, wont be getting too disheartened and I have no doubts that he'll be scoring goals again soon. Derek Young has also been playing well, whilst Darren Mackie and Chris Clark have shown they can offer us some natural width and with all three players under 21, I think the future does look promising.
The team had made a promising start to the season but things have stalled a bit recently. Whats went wrong?
I dont know to be honest. The injury problems at the start of the season affected us really badly and the manager was left with no option but to give the younger players a chance. They have come in and done really well and the outlook bright up until the International break which I think, looking back now, couldn't have come at a worse time for us. The boys were flying after the Celtic game and they had to wait two weeks before playing again. As Derek Whyte mentioned in the press recently, we just need a goal to get ourselves going again and I'm sure we can start moving up the table again.
Finally, we have to ask you-why did you chop the hair off?
I think the reason I did that is well known. A certain local journalist had commented on my hair as being the main reason I hadnt scored in a while. I couldnt believe it - what does my hair have to do with playing football? I decided there and then to cut it off just to prove a point to him and since then we've been taking the mickey a bit with eachother - but its all been light hearted and there's no malice involved.
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