HANLON’S TOP OF THE CLASS
PAUL HANLON admits studying to get to the top of the class at uni helped take his mind off Hibs’ struggles to make the grade in the Premiership.
The Easter Road skipper this week graduated from Edinburgh napier Uni with a BA in Business and Enterprise in Sport.
He did so with distinction and was awarded the class medal for outstanding academic performance.
The 33-year-old has been combining football displays with his academic showing for the past three years, now deciding to continue his studies on napier’s Applied Football Management course.
And Hanlon admits the worries of getting pass marks off the pitch helped him deal with the stresses of playing on it.
The defender, whose side face Celtic tomorrow, said: “I’m delighted. I started the course a number of years ago, so to get to the finishing line is a great feeling.
“I’ve got to look to the future in terms of my football career finishing and I looked at the content of the course. I’m looking at the coaching side but also the business side of a sporting organisation and a lot of the modules covered both bases.
“That was the main appeal of the course and it also gave me a separate focus away from the stress of playing football.
“All in all, it has been a really rewarding course.
“I would 100 per cent recommend it. Before I started the course I was a bit sceptical of how much it would help me from a football perspective.
“But that separate focus away from the stresses and strains of playing was great.
“I could go home at night, not really think about football and just concentrate on my studies.”