“When I was first coming up through Sunderland, there was an old-timer on the team. Local guy. He and his wife were about to have their first kid, so during training one day, I made a joke that, statistically, I was probably the real dad. And the boys fell about laughing, but he went fսcking nuts. He battered me. Properly. I had a black eye, chipped tooth, three broken ribs. I couldn’t play for six games. He got booted off the team. After that, no club would go near him. Then in the summer, after I could breathe again, I bumped into him in a pub. And I got the chance to say sorry for my stupid fսcking joke. And he got to tell me… he and his wife had lost the baby. A month before all that went down. He hadn’t told anyone. Kept it all inside. Look, I get that some people think if they buy a ticket, they’ve got the right to yell whatever abusive shit they want at footballers. But they’re not just footballers. They’re also people. And none of us know what is going on in each other’s lives.”
