Van Den Hauwe was brought up in London, and joined Birmingham City as an apprentice in July 1977. He made his debut in the First Division as a 17-year-old, on 7 October 1978 in a 2–1 home defeat to Manchester City. He played 143 games for Birmingham in all competitions before joining Everton in September 1984 for a fee of £100,000. He helped them win the league title and European Cup Winners' Cup that season, as well as a second league title two years later – when his goal against Norwich City at Carrow Road confirmed them as champions. In 1989, he signed for Tottenham Hotspur for a fee of £575,000, making his debut in a 2–0 defeat to Aston Villa on 9 September 1989. He won the FA Cup with Tottenham in 1991. In total he made 110 League appearances between 1989 and 1993, but never scored. He finished his Football League career with Millwall. He was commonly referred to as "Psycho Pat" by supporters, and used the nickname as the title of his autobiography.
International career
As a player with British citizenship born outside the UK, eligibility rules of the time meant that Van Den Hauwe qualified to play for the national football team of any of the four Home Nations—England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Van Den Hauwe spurned offers from England under Bobby Robson and Belgium under Guy Thys to represent Wales, having been recommended to Mike England by Everton team-mates Kevin Ratcliffe and Neville Southall. It was often speculated in the press that Van Den Hauwe had made this decision because he had Welsh ancestry, but according to his autobiography this was not the case. "No parent or grandparent—or even great grandparents—of mine were Welsh", he wrote. Van Den Hauwe made his international début for Wales in a 1986 FIFA World Cup qualification – UEFA Group 7 game versus Spain which ended with a 3–0 victory at the Racecourse Ground on 30 April 1985. His last game for Wales came on 26 April 1989 in a friendly 2–0 loss against Sweden, also at the Racecourse Ground.
Personal life
On 19 June 1993 he married model Mandy Smith, the former wife of Rolling Stones' bassist Bill Wyman, but they separated two years later and divorced in 1997.
