Supple finds new goals after soccer career slips away

Two years after quitting soccer, Shane Supple tells GAVIN CUMMISKEYhe is happiest playing the national sport

TWO YEARS on and every time a recording device is put under Shane Supple’s beak the same questions come up.

Sometimes the reporters are a little inventive and tie them into the task at hand, but usually he is asked to draw comparisons with the present GAA existence and his former life across the water.

It remains an interesting topic, because they remain such different worlds.

The GAA is a unique little bubble that Supple was able to climb back into on return from a five-year career in English soccer.

Life as a goalkeeper for Ipswich Town was not all plain sailing. Unable to break into the first team for any sustained period of time, he went on loan to Falkirk in Scotland and Oldham Athletic before walking into the Gaffer’s office one day and asking to be released from his contract. That the Gaffer happened to be Roy Keane can’t have made it easier.

The reason given? He had fallen out of love with the game of association football.

His body is not as finely tuned now as it was back then. It can’t be – he simply doesn’t have the time to maintain the sharpness of that other life.

“We’re only training a couple of nights a week, and you are doing your bits and pieces in the gym. You have your job to do as well. It is very difficult to keep up that standard and keep the body finely tuned. I’m not as fit as I’d like to be, but what can you do? You got to bite the bullet.

“Everyone is in the same boat really, unless you are on the dole.”

He currently works in the physiotherapy department of the Mater hospital, helping patients with rehabilitation.

Having walked away from a professional, if frustrating, sporting life, he was immediately taken back in by St Brigid’s, and it wasn’t long before Pat Gilroy asked him to understudy for Stephen Cluxton in the Dublin panel. Still only 24, he wants to be Dublin’s number one some day, with Sunday providing another bridge to reaching that aim.

It takes place in the hardly salubrious surroundings of O’Connor Park, Tullamore in the depths of winter, as Brigid’s face Garrycastle in the Leinster club football final. A different world, but he’s okay with that.

After five minutes of GAA chatter, the first tentative step into “what might have been” territory begins. How long are you back now, Shane, two years is it? “Yeah, two years now.”

Any moment during those two years when you regretted your decision? He laughs. “The only time I second-guessed myself was two or three months after I came back and we were relegated from division one. It was the worst day of my footballing life. We had five players sent off in a relegation play-off against Vincent’s.

“But the last two years have been unbelievable, the turnaround of the club has been just great.”

When you are watching the European Championships in Poland next summer, will the mind stray to what might have been? “Certainly not. I’ll be cheering them on. I’d love to be out there with the rest of the supporters cheering them on.” That probably won’t be possible, especially if he is part of the Dublin squad.

“I’d rather be here, looking forward to a Leinster final with the club. We have a great bunch of lads. There are no regrets. That doesn’t come into my thinking, although there could have been a possibility if I had stuck at it.”

What’s the difference then between the environments? “The GAA is a special thing to be a part of. I don’t think you really get that in the soccer; it is a different culture altogether and you can see, especially lads coming home from England, they want to get back involved in their national sport. It is a bit different from the soccer side of things, it is more family-orientated. It is hard to describe unless you have done both really.”