BREAKING NEWS:Sunderland AFC star Aaron Connolly signs his resignation letter ….
October 5, 2019. Connolly’s full professional debut, playing for Brighton at the age of 19, in a televised home game with Tottenham. He scored twice in a 3-0 win, and was immediately hailed as a superstar in the making.
It was everything he’d always dreamed of, growing up as a youngster in his native Ireland. Unbeknown to Connolly at the time, however, it was also the start of a downward plunge that would take his life and football career to the brink. At the point of his greatest triumph, Connolly was hurtling towards the abyss.
“I just stopped doing the things that got me to that position, where I felt so comfortable on the biggest stage. I just stopped working, stopped working hard, and you can’t do it. People always say, ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard’, and I never really thought about it, but it’s true. And in my case, it was.”
Too much, too young. Connolly had moved to England from Ireland at the age of 16 and lacked the support network he so desperately needed when his world changed overnight.
In the space of a couple of weeks, he went from being an unknown youngster, progressing assiduously through Brighton’s youth ranks, to a Premier League star. Offers came left, right and centre. Money, cars, houses, women. He could have anything he wanted. But it would cost him what had got him there in the first place.
“My phone was blowing up, social media,” said Connolly, who opted to tell his story in an interview with Sunderland’s official website to coincide with World Mental Health Day. “I remember it – 5th of October, 2019, it was a 12.30 kick-off. I’m never going to forget that day. It was one of the best days of my life, but also one of the worst because the following five years was from that.
“I just stopped working, stopped doing the things I should have kept doing. I started to believe the hype, and I just didn’t turn into a good person after that. I was tough to be around.
“Nobody could tell me anything, I’d done it all myself, nobody else helped me get to where I’d got to. That’s what I believed. It’s obviously not true, but that was genuinely what I thought at the time.
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