Former Ireland international Stephen Hunt defended professional footballers in his column in the Sunday Independent. However, he might have pissed off the entire GAA community in the process.
In response to Joe Brolly’s claim that professional footballers did not set good examples for the public, Stephen Hunt tried to argue the case that some of them are decent role models.
I heard Joe Brolly a couple of weeks ago saying that soccer players weren’t role models. I think footballers can be role models, even if one or two let people down, but I get the impression with Joe that he feels we lack the spirit of the true Gaels he admires so much.
However, there was one line in his piece that GAA players and fans alike, might take offence to. The Ipswich Town midfielder implied that GAA players would not be able to hack the professionalism involved with being a top-level footballer.
As somebody who grew up in the GAA, I can tell you that, as much as I love the games, if GAA players tried to live with the level of commitment shown by a professional footballer, they wouldn’t know what hit them.
Shots fired!
Hunt recounted an anecdote to illustrate the harsh reality of being a professional footballer.
When I was at Reading, I lived half a mile from the training ground. Each day, I would get in my car, which was of the required status for a Premier League footballer, and drive 800 yards to the training ground.
I wasn’t being flash, I just felt I had to rest. My life was dedicated to rest and then more rest. I would never go out and when I say ‘go out’, I don’t mean a night out, I mean out. I never left the house. All I did was train and rest, train and rest.
The 33-year old also revealed how the intense pressure of being a professional footballer made him develop what he thought was a form of hypochondria. Hunt explained how he thought the injury he picked up before Ireland’s last major tournament might have been fabricated by his own imagination.
Before Euro 2012, I was struggling with a groin injury but I was convinced it was in my head. My wife used to watch a couple called the Speakmans on daytime TV, who dealt with phobias and anxieties and she told me about them. I headed up to see the Speakmans and spent five grand for an hour’s consultation. I don’t know if it helped, but they seemed happy.
Hat-tip to Sunday Independent
