Ahead of Saturday's North London derby, Balls.ie spoke to former Spurs and Arsenal midfielder David Bentley. With thanks to Setanta Sports, Bentley was speaking to us at the Irishtown stadium in Ringsend at a free-kick masterclass
(During the session, Bentley highlighted the importance of and practising one's own routine, which was analogous with your correspondent's routine incompetence at free-kicks).
You can listen to more of the interview on our daily sports podcast, The Racket:
Bentley has had a couple of famous trips to Ireland in the past. One of these was illicit, the infamous Tottenham Christmas party trip to Coppers, of which you can read more here.
Another trip further North was more recent. Bentley competed in The Toughest Trade on TV3 last year, where he swapped places with Crossmaglen's Aaron Kernan. Kernan played some football/soccer (delete where appropriate) with Sunderland while Bentley lined out at centre-forward for Crossmaglen Rangers. Bentley recalls the experience fondly:
I loved it. It's a great experience. What a great opportunity to be given to play. To experience that is unbelievable.
Everyone would love to do that.
Bentley made quite an impressive debut, scoring 0-3. Most evocatively, he shipped a couple of heavy blows, the type a GAA fan might revel in being absent from top-level football/soccer (delete where appropriate).
The game should be remembered for the referee's magnificent wearing of a beanie hat:
Bentley quit football at the age of just 29, having grown disillusioned with the demands of professional football, saying that he was not enjoying the sport any longer.
The modern obsession with winning, returning good statistics and collecting a hefty wage in spite of not enjoying the game were some of the reasons he cited. Bentley reckons that the GAA retains some of the aspects that football has drifted away from:
Yeah, the togetherness, the community, the families, the history, it's amazing.
It (English football) used to be a lot more like that. The people are still there, the families are still there, but football's got away from that.
And when asked whether he kept in touch with some of his former GAA teammates, Bentley did not rule out a recreation of the Spurs Christmas party:
Yeah, I keep in touch with them.I'm meeting up with a couple of the Crossmaglen boys later tonight, actually.
Former Arsenal and Spurs midfielder David Bentley was at Dublin’s Irishtown Stadium today promoting live coverage of his former clubs’ crucial Premier League clash on the Setanta Sports Pack this Saturday at 12.45pm. It’s a Super Saturday of sport on the pack with UFC 196 McGregor V Diaz also exclusively live and three games in the Allianz Leagues also featuring. To subscribe go to www.setanta.com.
