Former Town keeper Shane Supple says discovering that some players didn’t care whether the team won or lost was one of the reasons he decided to give up football at the age of 22. Supple made the shock decision to leave the Blues and football last month.
In an interview in the Daily Mail, Supple says his disenchantment with the game had been there for some while: "The decision was brewing over a number of years. The first time I thought this might not be the thing for me was the Christmas of 2005. That was my first Christmas away.
"My dad came over for the Boxing Day game and I remember saying to him then, ‘I don’t think this is the thing for me. I don’t like what I’m seeing’.
"When you’re a young lad your one aim is to get into the first team. You’re in digs, you’re training, you’re resting, all you’re looking at is the first team. Being away from home can be difficult on top of that, but at first it wasn’t a problem for me.”
Supple says he was surprised at the attitude shown by some players once he reached the senior side: "Then I got into the first team and I saw that some of the lads didn’t really care whether we won or lost. I didn’t really like that, that was disillusioning. "Things weren’t going great at the club at the time, which I suppose didn’t help, but it made me question whether this was what I wanted to do.
"I was 18. That was when it started to creep in. I was in the team as well, so it was a strange one. The season finished and the manager, Joe Royle, left. The same feelings were in the back of my head and I nearly did it then.
"I thought, ‘I’ll go home, this isn’t for me’. But I stayed, probably for the wrong reasons, for other people. But I didn’t want to let people down.”
Supple, who has started playing Gaelic football since his return to Dublin, is now back in education and is reportedly set to follow his father into the police force.