FOR an hour or two, it was the greatest moment of Aaron Connolly’s life.
October 5, 2019. Connolly’s full professional debut, playing for Brighton at the age of 19, in a televised home game with Tottenham. He scored twice in a 3-0 win, and was immediately hailed as a superstar in the making.
It was everything he’d always dreamed of, growing up as a youngster in his native Ireland. Unbeknown to Connolly at the time, however, it was also the start of a downward plunge that would take his life and football career to the brink. At the point of his greatest triumph, Connolly was hurtling towards the abyss.
“I’ve gone from playing Under-23s football and getting a lot of plaudits there, to being shot straight into the biggest league in the world, scoring two goals,” said the striker, now 24 and with Sunderland, having joined the Black Cats as a free agent last month. “I’ve said before though, that’s probably the start of when my career started to go downhill, when really it should have been carrying on upwards.
“I just stopped doing the things that got me to that position, where I felt so comfortable on the biggest stage. I just stopped working, stopped working hard, and you can’t do it. People always say, ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard’, and I never really thought about it, but it’s true. And in my case, it was.”
Too much, too young. Connolly had moved to England from Ireland at the age of 16 and lacked the support network he so desperately needed when his world changed overnight.
In the space of a couple of weeks, he went from being an unknown youngster, progressing assiduously through Brighton’s youth ranks, to a Premier League star. Offers came left, right and centre. Money, cars, houses, women. He could have anything he wanted. But it would cost him what had got him there in the first place.
“My phone was blowing up, social media,” said Connolly, who opted to tell his story in an interview with Sunderland’s official website to coincide with World Mental Health Day. “I remember it – 5th of October, 2019, it was a 12.30 kick-off. I’m never going to forget that day. It was one of the best days of my life, but also one of the worst because the following five years was from that.
“I just stopped working, stopped doing the things I should have kept doing. I started to believe the hype, and I just didn’t turn into a good person after that. I was tough to be around.
“Nobody could tell me anything, I’d done it all myself, nobody else helped me get to where I’d got to. That’s what I believed. It’s obviously not true, but that was genuinely what I thought at the time.
“I didn’t know how to deal with it, if I’m being honest. My parents tried, but they weren’t living with me. I was living with my ex-girlfriend at the time, and it’s hard because I didn’t ever feel like I had that authoritative figure to keep me grounded.
“My parents did try, but I just let myself believe everything people were saying online and it just took over. I always say to my parents, I started to live the life of a footballer without the football side of it. That was the hardest thing to admit at the time, that I wasn’t doing all the things that had got me to the position where I could go and get my house and treat my family, and do all that sort of stuff.
“It hurts to look back and speak about it because I know if I had done everything right, maybe I would still be in the Premier League. Maybe I wouldn’t, but at least I’d know I’d given it all I could to try to stay at that level.”
Instead, Connolly embarked on a series of unsuccessful loan moves. His time at Middlesbrough was a disaster, with stories of his off-field antics overshadowing anything he did on the pitch. His time in Italy with Venezia was even worse, as he found himself languishing in the reserves of an Italian Second Division team.
As his on-field fortunes nosedived, so his life away from football unravelled even more spectacularly. Alcohol had long been a problem, but now it was completely dominating, and ruining, his every waking hour.
“It was obvious I had a problem with alcohol for a good few years,” said Connolly. “I had my parents, who never drank before and were always telling me when I was younger to stay away from alcohol. That was always their thing because of addiction to alcohol in my family.
“I didn’t listen, clearly. It got me into a lot of trouble and a lot of problems, and it just became something that I relied on. It felt like my buzz used to come from football, and winning games and scoring goals, and it got to a point where the buzz was more from drinking alcohol than going out on a football pitch.
“I used to look forward to the games finishing so I could have time to go and have a drink and socialise. I say socialise, but it was just an excuse to go and get drunk, to go straight to alcohol, and that was where I got my buzz from, whereas before, it was always the buzz of football and being around an environment like I am now. For three or four years, that just wasn’t there.”
Connolly just about managed to hold thing together last season, which he spent in the Championship with Hull City, but his drinking remained a problem that became even more acute when he was released by the Tigers and spent the summer without a club.
By the end of July, he admits things had reached a point where his life had spiralled completely out of control. There was not a single moment of recognition, more a series of events that forced him to concede that he needed outside help to address his addiction.
“I decided that it was just too much,” he said. “I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t live the way I was living. It was killing people round me, to be honest. My family, my friends. Mainly, it was killing me, really.
“I had one of my best seasons last year at Hull, but off the pitch, my life was a mess. The manager at Hull, to be fair, always looked after me, and always tried to help. But it just got to a point where, it wasn’t like life wasn’t worth living, it wasn’t a big dramatic thing, but it was just that my life was so unmanageable and I couldn’t control what I could do and couldn’t control my alcohol.
“It just got to a point where I had to make a decision where I needed to go to a treatment clinic, and I spent a month there in the summer. I just said to my agent, ‘I don’t want you to contact any clubs. I’m not doing this for football, I’m doing this so I can get my life back, and if stuff in football comes with that, then that’s a bonus’.
“It wasn’t even the football that was taking the biggest battering in the end, it was my life, my relationships, my friends. Everything was just failing and falling apart. When your parents are calling you and you’re not answering calls because you know you’re breaking their hearts, it’s time to realise that you’ve got a problem.”
The treatment got Connolly to a place where he could live without alcohol. That led to a contract offer from Sunderland, and ushered him to a point where he feels comfortable talking about his demons. In doing so, he hopes to be able to help others who might be struggling.
“It’s an addiction, and the toughest thing I ever had to do was go in there,” he said. “The PFA helped me pay for my treatment, and I know some people might not be able to afford it, but it’s important to know it’s not just park bench, vodka bottle. Anybody can get affected by it.
“There’s no price tag or no amount of money in the world that can cure it. It’s a disease, an illness. But going to the clinic was the best and worst month of my life.
“I just hope this might help people. I had everything every young boy would dream, but I couldn’t get hold of my addiction without that help.”
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