'There'll always be someone . . . better than you'

SPORTING PASSIONS TONY McCOY:I DON'T know why, but for some reason when I was really young I took a liking to Arsenal. It was when I was about five or six, in or around 1980, the time when they were playing FA Cup finals and things like that. I suppose Liam Brady and Pat Jennings, being Irish as well, were two of the reasons why I supported them.

In my eyes Liam Brady was the best footballer ever. I actually know him well now, and it’s not often you get to become friendly with someone who was your hero when you were growing up.

I just thought he had everything. He had great skills, he could score goals and I thought he was an amazing footballer. So when I was a kid that’s who I wanted to try and play football like, and I’m sure that for me he was every bit as good as the modern day superstars.

When I was younger I went to get Pat Jennings to sign a football for me when he was over in a local sports shop. I was lucky enough to get his autograph and I thought it was a great thing.

I’ve met him on numerous occasions since then and he’s the absolute gentleman that everyone is led to believe he is. I don’t think he’s changed in any way – not even in his appearance.

Since I came to England in 1994, I got into following lots of games and played the fan’s role of going to support the team. Midweek games or European games are the ones I’d normally get to, but I go about 10 or 12 times a year.

Arsenal fans got very spoiled pretty much from a couple of years after Arsene Wenger took over, because the 2004 side that went unbeaten were as good as any side I’ve ever seen. Right from the back you had the likes of Martin Keown and Tony Adams, and then you had Bergkamp, Henry, Vieira and Pires. I think it’ll be a long time before Arsenal will be able to build a side with that much strength-in-depth and that much quality.

I think they’ve got the right manager to do that though. I’m a total Wenger fan and I think he’s as good a manager as there is. Obviously Alex Ferguson has achieved everything, but for a pure Arsenal football fan who has got Arsenal Football Club at heart I think Wenger is the best man we could ever have got.

He’s great at finding talent, and there’s no doubt I would love to go and tell him, “Look, any chance you’d buy us another central defender and a central midfielder who can play along with Fabregas?”

But it’s very hard. How do you go about replacing Henry, Bergkamp, Pires and Vieira – four players that would have got into any football team in the world?

When I was a kid I was a total sports fanatic and I still am – I watch everything. I was a big Alex Higgins fan, and even though I’m a devoted Arsenal fan I think George Best was great.

Snooker, football and Gaelic football – even though Antrim weren’t very good at it – I gave that a go too. When I was growing up I loved watching the All-Ireland championships and I still do. Obviously I was in Kilkenny for four-and-a-half years from when I was 15 so I got dosed up with them too. But from 12-18 I was obsessed with racing, and for any jockey who was growing up at that time Lester Piggott was a god.

As a sportsman, you obviously get to a point where there’s a fear of failure as much as anything. Even though you appreciate what you’ve achieved – and the moment you do achieve it there’s nothing better than it – when you wake up the next morning you think, “If I don’t do it again then someone else is going to come along and do it better than me”.

You have to move with the times and you have to try to keep improving because someone else is going to find a way of improving or doing it better than you. People always say that “this will never be done again”, but it always is. There’ll always be someone coming up who’ll do it better than you, no matter how good you think you are.

The other thing about sport is that to be relatively good at it, you have to really enjoy it. It has to be something that you really want to do. It has to be something that you’re not so much obsessed with but that you’re sort of in love with – something that’s an enjoyment to you as much as it is anything else.