‘What the hell has gone wrong with Aaron Connolly?’ is a question Irish football fans have asked many a time in recent years.
Now we know.
If the Galway man had built on the potential he showed seven years ago when he made his debut for Brighton when he was just 17, he would have been in Helsinki on Thursday evening, leading the Irish attack against Finland.
Instead, he’s attempting to rebuild his career at Sunderland, his sixth club in as many years: Brighton, loans to Luton, Middlesbrough, Venezia, in Italy’s second division, and Hull City, and now a move to Sunderland. The day he scored twice for Brighton against Spurs on his first Premier League start is a distant memory.
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“It was one of the best days of my life, but also one of the worst because the following five years I just stopped working, doing the things that made me feel so comfortable on the biggest stage.
“I started to believe the hype. I didn’t turn into a good person after that. That’s probably when my career started to go downhill. People always say hard work beats talent. I never really thought about that, but it’s true.”
That confession featured in a candid interview on Sunderland’s YouTube channel on Thursday, Connolly admitting that alcohol has been at the root of his problems.
“And it was obvious I had a problem with alcohol for a good few years. My parents always advised me to stay away from it, but I didn’t listen. It felt like my buzz used to come from football, winning games and scoring goals, but it got to a point where the buzz was more from drinking. I used to look forward to the games finishing so I could have a drink.
“I was tough to be around. I didn’t know how to deal with it, if I’m being honest. I started to live the lifestyle of a footballer, without the football side of it. I wasn’t doing all the things, the hard work, that got me into the position where I could go and buy my house and could treat my family. It hurts to look back because I know that if I’d done everything right, I’d maybe still be in the Premier League.”
“But I started living a lifestyle that wasn’t me and I just lost track of myself, I lost track of why I was playing football. The only reason I started football was to go and score goals in the Premier League, I never thought about buying a big car or a flashy big house or anything like that. But then it just clicked in my head that that was all I was chasing. Chasing nothing.”
It was during the summer that Connolly decided to confront his alcohol addiction. “I couldn’t live the way I was living because it was killing the people around me, my family, my friends, and mainly it was killing me.”
“I just got to a point where life wasn’t worth living, it was so unmanageable, I couldn’t control my alcohol. I had to make a decision that I needed to go to a treatment clinic so I spent a month there in the summer.
“I was doing it to get my life back, not for football, but for my relationships, my family, my friends. Everything was just falling apart. When your parents are calling you and you’re not answering and you know you’re breaking their hearts, it’s time to realise that you’ve got a problem.”
“I had everything that any young boy could dream of, but I just couldn’t get hold of my addiction. It’s not just ‘park bench vodka bottle’, that’s not it, anybody can get affected by it and there’s no price tag, there’s no amount of money in the world that can cure it.
“It’s a disease. It’s an illness. Going to the clinic was the best and worst month of my life, but it was the most important thing I’ve ever done because it was getting to a point where it was all just a dark, dark place.
“The way I was, that’s not how I was raised. It was never about the money, the fame, the social media clout, or anything like that. It was for my family, for my friends, and it’s good to know they are proud again, proud of the person who has come out of all of this.
“I feel refreshed. I feel like that 15-year-old who went to Brighton and was just chasing a dream. I am that boy again.”