One story more than any other in the press this week caught my eye and caused me to write this article in the general defence of footballers.

League One side Crewe Alexandra have returned to pre-season training just 17 days after their season ended. Coach Steve Holland said: "It's a professional business that we are in, and the days of eight and nine weeks off have long gone."

'Good job', I hear you say. 'About time these pampered prima donnas were shown what it's like in the real world'.

'I was always physically suffering after playing for Alderbury in the Salisbury and District Sunday League - but that was possibly due to playing with a hangover and smoking at half-time'


The fact is that these players have returned for next season before this season has even finished! The Champions League and the play-offs haven't been concluded and these lads are already in preparation for August.

The life of a footballer is not the glamorous easy lifestyle that we all imagine. Maybe it is for the few who make it right to the top, but even most of them have made tremendous sacrifices to get where they are. The financial rewards are great for the top players, but you don’t have to go very far down the ladder to find a very different picture.

I speak from experience. Not my own personal experience you understand. I was always physically suffering after playing for Alderbury in the Salisbury and District Sunday League - but that was possibly due to playing with a hangover and smoking at half-time. I talk from the experience of my son.

He is a semi-professional footballer and I see what he has to go through. For not a great deal of money he trains on a Tuesday and Thursday evening and plays every Saturday and many Wednesdays. In the season just finished he played 47 games.

I see him almost unable to walk after the games towards the end of the season as his body has taken just about all it can. I see him not going out with his mates apart from on a Saturday night because he has to look after himself. I see him not enjoying Christmas like the rest of us because he has a twelve o’clock kick-off on Boxing Day.

I see him going to bed at one minute after midnight, totally sober, on New Year's Eve because he has a game the next day. I see him not coming on family holidays because he can't miss pre-season training. If he wants a holiday he must go at the end of May, in early June, or not at all.

I also see him not knowing where he is going to be playing or who he is going to be playing with year after year, because in the financial climate of the lower reaches of the game, nobody is given a contract for more than one season.

I know that nobody forces my son to do this and I know that he is doing it because he wants to. I just want to show that players who earn their living from playing football outside the Premier League are paid average wages and work incredibly hard for them.

The players at clubs like Crewe Alexandra must get very fed up indeed when they see people writing about the supposed luxurious and pampered lives they lead.