EXCLUSIVE: I quit to escape the players who didn’t care, says Shane Supple
The game is the dream, the dream is to make it and for most of us it is just that, a dream. But for a few it becomes reality and on August 13, 2005, Shane Supple achieved his dream.
Three months after his 18th birthday, goalkeeper Supple appeared as an Ipswich Town substitute at Leicester City in the 35th minute and kept a clean sheet.
Shane Supple had arrived in professional football. Almost four years to the day, Shane Supple departed, saying he no longer wanted this reality.
Now 22, Supple walked into the office of his new manager, who happened to be Roy Keane, and said so. It was a Wednesday morning, Keane was ‘taken aback’.
By Thursday, the press were informed and Supple’s phone ‘started hopping’. On Friday, he sold his house in East Anglia and by Saturday, Supple was back in his native Dublin.
He could not have been happier, the rest of us could not have been more bemused.
What about the dream? Sitting in a Dublin hotel, Supple explained what brought him to a conclusion that so few comprehend. Having started school a year early, Supple left Ireland permanently for Ipswich aged only 15 and he was frank about homesickness.
There were good and bad spells for a keeper who played for the Republic of Ireland Under 21s. He enjoyed ‘the banter’ at Ipswich and made friends but he also noticed ‘the politics’ and ‘young players getting sucked into a kind of lifestyle that was not for him’.
Supple recalls: ‘Even if I could have afforded to drive a Bentley, that’s not what I was in it for. Some seem to think it’s about flashiness, the big house, big money, cars. That wouldn’t be my take on things.
'I remember Joe Royle saying that some of them think they’re stars and they’re not even players.’
He will not identify individuals, but the effect was that ‘things snowballed slowly in my head.’
His dream has been replaced by an ambition, to follow his father Brendan into the Irish police force, the Garda Siochana.
But to many his decision still remains sudden and inexplicable. Supple signed a one-year contract at Portman Road in June, but he revealed that doubts sprouted just a few months after his debut at Leicester.
‘The decision was brewing over a number of years. The first time I thought this might not be the thing for me was the Christmas of 2005. That was my first Christmas away.
‘My dad came over for the Boxing Day game and I remember saying to him then, “I don’t think this is the thing for me. I don’t like what I’m seeing”.
'When you’re a young lad your one aim is to get into the first team. You’re in digs, you’re training, you’re resting, all you’re looking at is the first team. Being away from home can be difficult on top of that, but at first it wasn’t a problem for me.
'Then I got into the first team and I saw that some of the lads didn’t really care whether we won or lost. I didn’t really like that, that was disillusioning. Things weren’t going great at the club at the time, which I suppose didn’t help, but it made me question whether this was what I wanted to do.
'I was 18. That was when it started to creep in. I was in the team as well, so it was a strange one. The season finished and the manager, Joe Royle, left. The same feelings were in the back of my head and I nearly did it then.
'I thought, “I’ll go home, this isn’t for me”. But I stayed, probably for the wrong reasons, for other people. But I didn’t want to let people down.’
On the family side?
‘Yes. My father saw it as a great opportunity for me, make X amount, get set up for life.
'He was doing his job, struggling hard and he found it hard to understand at first. Now he understands. He’s been great about it.’
Inevitably, there was a belief that there had been a confrontation with Keane, but Supple signed the new contract on the basis of Keane’s arrival.
‘People said I couldn’t get on with Roy, but if that was the case then I’d have gone to another club.’
Keane’s first pre-season at Ipswich featured two days at an Army barracks doing assault courses and sleeping rough. The climax was the killing of a pig for dinner (by soldiers) and Supple proudly recalls that he was on the winning team.
‘They said the pig would not feel it, but the pig shrieked,’ he said.
That did not prevent him eating it, though, while others declined.
So Keane was not a reason, but others’ reluctance on that two-day test clearly reinforced some beliefs within Supple.
‘I’m a bit old-fashioned, maybe that was a problem. Playing 30 years ago would have been ideal, I always thought that. Ipswich itself is a nice place. But the academy system makes young players complacent.’
Supple has rejoined his Gaelic football club in Dublin and started playing again. He likes the fact that they wash their own boots and kit.
‘It’s a far cry from Ipswich and everything being laid out for you,’ he says.
He also enjoyed his brief loan spell at Falkirk ‘because the players brought packed lunches’.
He has re-entered education already but is realistic about a new career in Ireland’s shattered economy.
He should also be realistic about the questions that keep getting asked.
He added: ‘People can’t get their heads around it, they’re saying that there must be something else.
‘But plain and simply, there’s not. I’m a bit different in my mentality. I know what I want out of life, and sometimes that’s difficult to explain, but I know how I felt.
'Everyone wants to be happy and that wasn’t the case for me over there.’
