Time in The Sun
Back in April 2019 I was running a law firm and the idea of receiving a phone call from The Sun about a potential story usually meant going into defensive mode on behalf of clients.
But when Jonathan Boon from the newspaper’s sport team called me he wanted to talk about the support and education I had been doing in football for some time. Six years on, the article remains the best and most faithful piece I’ve done about my work.
Below are a few snippets of quotes I gave for the article.
“We work with lots of Premier League clubs, and it’s not as simple as going in and tidying up someone’s social media. We go in deeper and provide education to young boys and girls coming through the ranks and talk to them about minimising risk. We encourage them to be respectful and talk to them about how to communicate. All football clubs are trying to create great players, as well as great human beings, and we’re part of that process. What’s important is it’s not just us, going in once, we go in many times and offer them support.”
It’s interesting that I spoke about phone addiction, something that in 2025 is front and centre of the work we do with players: “There’s absolutely no doubt that gaming and social media is addictive … one of the elements of what we teach is the obsessive and addictive nature of social media, particularly when we’re talking to very young players whose mums and dads have got a time limit on when they should be turning off their devices.
“We say to the lads there is a reason why there’s a time limit, and it’s because the blue light shining into your face late at night means you’re not going to fall asleep properly.
“That means your body’s not going to recover overnight, you’re not going to get big and strong or perhaps realise your dreams of being a professional football player.”
There was also a specific example I gave, of the (then) social media shy Conor Coady, which has now completely changed:
“Conor Coady at Wolves is a rare example. He is charismatic, does a lot of good social media with Wolves, but he has made a decision to have no social media himself. Conor made a decision early in his career that he was going to stay off it.
“I worked with Fernando Torres when he was Chelsea. He didn’t use social media for a very long time too. But he didn’t want anyone squatting on his name.
“So his agents blocked out @Torres for him, and it was about three years before he posted anything.”
Fast forward to 2025 and Conor is very much online with nearly 200 posts (and plenty of Stories) on his Instagram.
To read the whole Sun article see here:
