The shame of two relegations turned me from a boy into a man very quickly
SAYS PETER HARTLEY
EVERY player has a career showreel filled with highs and lows, the latter obviously pushed far back into the memory bank. Only a minority, however, would see the positives from those disappointments — not least when back-to-back relegations are involved.
For Motherwell’s on-loan defender Peter Hartley, those two hammer blows were defining moments to which the player insists he owes his subsequent successes.
‘I was relegated two seasons in a row with Hartlepool and Stevenage and it was the best thing that ever happened to my career,’ recalled the 29-year-old Englishman.
‘It turned me from a boy to a man very quickly as you realise that nothing in the game is given. You’ve got to work very hard and think there’s always next week. You have 90 minutes to get a win and you take it one week at a time.’
Hartlepool-born Hartley was the local boy who, at 23, was leading out his home favourites. For many football fans, it is a dream scenario to have a captain with such close affiliations to the club and area.
But as results dipped and the losses mounted up, Hartley had to face up to the reality that he and his team-mates had failed the fans and the town.
Even going about his day-to-day life saw him subjected to a barrage of abuse for the team’s shortcomings.
‘We didn’t have a good start and then John Hughes took over,’ he said. ‘We ended up nearly getting out of it. We went on a really good run and we got beat two or three games in a row around March and that was really it. I found it very difficult to walk around the streets. I had a dog’s life and that’s why it turned me into a man from a boy because it wasn’t just a job. It affected my day-to-day life.
‘I couldn’t pop to the supermarket without taking pelters, but you have to deal with it in a professional way.
‘You can’t give back as much as you’re getting, but I was young and I learned from it and here I am today.
‘It was hard for me to switch off because I was still quite a young lad at the time, I was just 23, but you learn from these things.’
Relegation with Stevenage in 2014 proved another valuable lesson for Hartley and now he finds himself preparing for Sunday’s Betfred Cup final with Celtic at Hampden.
Trophy success with Stephen Robinson’s side would be among the highlights of his career to date.
A more mature and well-read player from those Hartlepool days, it was the power of literature that Hartley cites as the reason his whole outlook on football changed.
Nowadays, the defender envisions daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals to keep himself mentally stimulated and, following a cup run that has already seen off Aberdeen and Rangers, his manager and team-mates are reaping the rewards of that approach at Fir Park.
‘The biggest thing mentally was that, in that summer, I went away with my missus and broke everything down,’ he admitted.
‘You question yourself a lot and you look at yourself in the mirror and you see what you could have done better to try and effect things differently.
‘I tried to change my mindset and I read a few types of books and went down a different path. I never read books before and I also tried visualisation techniques, which were also new to me, before games.
‘If you look at my career from those two relegations, I then went on to play in back-to-back play-offs and got back into League One with Bristol Rovers last season. Now I’m in the Betfred Cup final with Motherwell, so my approach has helped me.’
Hartley is very well-versed in those self-help books, thanks, in no small part, to a career that’s taken him far from home and left him with a lot of time on his hands.
‘I’m from near Newcastle and I played with Plymouth, so imagine that drive,’ he joked.
‘You can only listen to so much music, so I listened to a lot of audio books about man management and things like that. I saw (psychologist) Steve Peters, who went away with England to the World Cup, and read his book The Chimp Paradox. That’s how it started for me.
‘I also read a book a few years ago on holiday by a guy called Napoleon Hill called Think and Grow Rich.
‘I read it every summer because it’s addictive. You get something new from it each time. It helps you because you can physically be ready for a game — but if your mind isn’t right, that won’t matter.’
As Motherwell have no distractions
I read books on mindset and try visualisation techniques before games
between now and Sunday’s final, Hartley has had plenty of time to keep his body and mind fresh and focused for the challenge ahead against Brendan Rodgers’ Invincibles.
Celtic’s unbeaten domestic run may have stretched more than 17 months — it began with a 7-0 hammering of Mark McGhee’s Motherwell at Parkhead on May 15, 2016 — but, for Hartley, there is no fear factor surrounding this weekend’s showpiece.
The Steelmen have become a far tougher proposition under the stewardship of Robinson, shaping up nicely for Sunday’s final with a 2-0 Premiership victory over Aberdeen at Pittodrie last weekend, and Hartley insists the Hampden clash will be no walkover for Celtic.
‘We are always the underdogs, but we are going there to win,’ he said with an air of authority.
‘We are not going there just to make up the numbers. We are going to Hampden to lift the trophy and we have full belief in our manager to come up with a plan. We also have full belief in ourselves that we can execute it.
‘They are only human at the end of the day and it is 11 men versus 11 men.
‘We get a lot of criticism about being physical, but we are a good team and we are a team that plays football in the right areas.
‘You saw that against Aberdeen this season. We have beaten them twice and we have scored five goals against them in three games, so we are no mugs.’