Irish midfielder Keith Treacy was on 98 FM's Now That's What I Call Sport this morning, and revealed that he quit English football to move home to play in the League of Ireland as he was mentally exhausted by the pressures of English football. Treacy played 66 times for Burnley, making 31 appearances in the promotion-winning campaign of 2013/14. He then left the club and joined Barnsley on a two-year contract, only to terminate it after six months. Treacy subsequently joined Drogheda United, and is now with St Patrick's Athletic.
Treacy revealed on 98fm that, while he would have earned much more money in England, he had become fatigued by the demands of the sport and is "a million times happier" having come home:
I wasn't in a good way. Mentally I was over the place, physically I had abused my body that week [the week before Treacy decided to leave England] drinking, and whatever else there was. Something clicked in my head that I wasn't right. I facetimed my missus and she knew I wasn't right, and that was when we decided to go home.
Treacy has won six senior caps with Ireland and believes that the transition from playing in packed stadiums to more sparsely populated League of Ireland grounds is easily assimilated:
You don't pay attention to it. I just look at it as a game of football. It doesn't matter if there are two men and a dog watching me or 50,000 people watching me, a game of football is a very easy game made complicated by people outside it.
You can listen to the interview in full on the 98fm website, here.
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