Injured ace switches from pitches to lawns FLOWER POWER
Froggatt: Gardening’s a perfect stress-buster for stars
ANXIOUS Premier League stars can ease their fears over football starting again by getting in the garden.
The top flight kicks off in 10 days, but with Covid-19 still taking lives, high-profile players led by Troy Deeney and N’golo Kante have voiced their concerns.
Steve Froggatt went through his own mental torment when in the space of two years his career was ended at 27 because of injury and his dad, 49, died of a heart attack.
Froggatt (below) admitted: “Football is a stressful business.
“You need some relief from that and it must be harder for players with what is going on in the world with the coronavirus and yet they are being asked to play football.
Choice
“If it’s as safe as possible, I would 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 and Froggatt, whose world was on the edge of collapse with a wife and two kids to provide for, recommends getting out in the garden.
He added: “These players today, they have their mansions. Get out in them, do the garden.
“It’s your hideaway, frees the mind, 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 England manager Kevin Keegan that he’d get his first caps in the next two internationals against Ukraine and Brazil.
He’d just had a daughter and his career was flying, until Sunderland’s Nicky Summerbee wrecked his knee in a challenge.
He said: “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, I had young children.
“I’d gone from earning quite a lot of money to absolutely zero. We had to go through our finances and blast the whole 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 advisor.
He said: “I didn’t hit the lager, I didn’t have that addictive personality that would lead me down only one path, I was just a guy really struggling inside. Having gone through it
I can see why footballers can enter a very dark place. I was on the edge of it. If circumstances had taken a different turn it could have been really bad for me.”
The moment Froggatt, now 47, lost his career he started gardening, ripping it all out and starting again.
He said: “When the kids were around me I was fine. 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, might have been.
Loss
“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.
“Huge bamboos I put in. There was a palm tree that was two foot when we planted it. Now it’s 30- 40ft. And there’s 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 about playing again then gardening is better than gambling, better than 101 things a footballer might be doing.”