Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
FLOWER POWER
How ex-Premier League star Steve Froggatt has taken to gardening to fight stress
ANXIOUS Premier League stars should ease their fears over football starting again... by getting in the garden.
The Prem kicks off in 10 days’ time, but, with Covid-19 still taking lives, high-profile players led by Watford’s Troy Deeney and Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante have voiced fears.
Steve Froggatt went through his own mental torment when, within two years, his career was ended at 27, due to injury, and his dad had a fatal heart attack, aged 49.
“Football is a stressful business,” said Froggatt (left). “You need some relief and it must be even harder for players with what is going on in with the coronavirus and yet they are still being asked to play football.
“If it’s as safe as possible, I’d play. But I can fully understand why some wouldn’t, especially if they have vulnerable family members. It should be a personal choice.”
Players are fighting mentally to come to terms with it. Froggatt – whose own world was on the edge of collapse in the aftermath of a career-ending horror tackle in 2000, with a wife and two kids to provide for – recommends getting out in the garden.
“These players today, they have their mansions,” said Froggatt. “So get out in them, do the garden. It’s your hideaway, frees the mind and gives you solace.
“It’s rewarding, it will grow and takes you away from the negatives gnawing at you.”
Froggatt, a winger with Coventry, had been promised by then-England manager Kevin Keegan that he would get his first caps in the next two internationals against Ukraine and Brazil.
He and his wife had just had a baby daughter and his career was flying – until Sunderland’s Nicky Summerbee wrecked Froggatt’s knee in a challenge.
“I was in a taxi with the physio going to Manchester to see the specialist and I said, ‘This knee just doesn’t seem right. I’m not going to play again, am I?’.
“He looked at me and just said, ‘No, you’re not’. And that was it. Over. I was lost, totally lost, no idea what I was going to do.
“All I knew was I had a house with big bills and young children. I’d gone from earning quite a lot – to absolutely zero.
“We had to go through our finances and blast the lot to survive. I had to come to terms with that – and then my dad died.”
Twenty years on, Froggatt is now a successful mortgage adviser.
“I didn’t hit the lager, I didn’t have that addictive personality that would lead me down only one path,” he explained. “I was just a guy really struggling inside.
“Having gone through it, I can see why footballers can enter a very dark place. If circumstances had taken a different turn, it could have been really bad for me.”
The moment Froggatt lost his career, he started working on his garden. He ripped out what was there and started again.
“When the kids were around me I was fine,” he recalled. “But when they went to nursery and school, I was in the house on my own. There was no Dad, either, which was worse than losing my career.
“That’s when I struggled with life – what could have been, what might have been.
“I had never done gardening, no interest at all – it was ignited by the loss of my career. I’d be out in the garden six, seven hours every day, losing myself in it.
“I put in huge bamboos, a palm tree that was 2ft when planted – now it’s 30-40ft – and there are three dotted around.
“It’s all done now and it’s a place I go to for peace. After a stressful day, I’ll pop in the garden for an hour, pick up a few weeds and the world disappears.
“If a footballer is stressing over the restart, then gardening is better than gambling or 101 other things they might be doing.”