THE DEVONSHIRE COUNTRYSIDE is pitch black and still.
A fire had been burning in a field nearby but the smoke has now cleared.
“There are always those little bonfires around here. Farmers or whatever. A bit different to the ones in Bray,” Pierce Sweeney laughs. “But you get used to seeing them.”
As you would after seven years.
That is when he paid his own air fare to go on trial at Exeter City following his release by Reading in 2016. The defender impressed, but he was only signed because of a supporter-backed fund that pays either the full or partial salary of an additional player.
“That’s the responsibility you feel at a club like this,” Sweeney adds, as this year they celebrated being fan-owned – and run – for the last two decades after almost going out of existence.
Pierce Sweeney is Mr. Exeter.
“Oh, we do love him, we absolutely love him,” octogenarian Di Lee, life-long fan, and volunteer since the fans took charge, beams.
He is the club captain and longest-serving player with 330 appearances.
There have been six seasons in League Two, three play-off final defeats at Wembley, and one ill-fated transfer that was never actually registered and led to his return less than 24 hours after it was announced.
“He has come back from the dead a few times,” technical director Marcus Flitcroft says.
But there’s more.
“I have two kids. There are six chickens, a duck and a fox out the back somewhere. We have two dogs and one of them is pregnant with six or seven puppies,” Sweeney continues.
He met his long-term partner Jadeine on Tinder.
Two days of flirting, in which he said he was a builder and she told him she fancied Niall Horan, have led to seven years together.
Originally from Bournemouth, she settled in the very southwest of England with her mother and stepfather after they married. Amanda is a nurse and Aiden a former Royal Marine who now works as a delivery driver.
Myla (three) and Freddie (one) are the real bosses of this house.
The 42 spent last weekend in the thick of it all, given unique access into Sweeney’s life on and off the pitch at a time of major personal and professional reflection.
So, just how do you end up at Exeter? Almost on the edge of England and on the edge of the game.
“Well, I made a bollox of it to be honest with you,” Sweeney says.
***
The journey from Exeter Airport to the club’s Cliff Hill training ground is around 15 minutes.
“It’s quality,” Sweeney says on the drive.
He’s not wrong.
Where once they had a dilapidated shack “with three working radiators covered in cobwebs”, Exeter now boasts a £3 million complex that was fully funded by its supporters.
Sweeney leads us upstairs, makes some brief introductions to manager Gary Caldwell, and then heads into the canteen overlooking the first-team training pitch for some breakfast of scrambled eggs, avocado and coffee.
Teammates are dotted around on the four rows of tables, while some take advantage of the blistering sun on the balcony.
On the back wall is a television with in-possession patterns of play on a loop. On the front wall are the names of all those supporters who provided extra funds to help kit out the entire building with furniture, appliances and supplies.
“Is it OK to touch?” Sweeney asks Ilmari Niskanen, one of the club’s two Finland internationals, who suffered a dislocated shoulder during their most recent Euro 2024 qualifiers.
“He’s always smiling, always really happy, a great fella. The gaffer asked if I had a spare room for him so he could come and live with me to see if it would rub off on me,” Sweeney laughs.
As he begins to eat, he is approached by a member of staff and told it will cost £250 to replace one of the GPS systems a youth team player threw into the wash with his kit by mistake. The company will replace it free of charge.
“Right, he still needs to be fined but not 250 quid, that will be too much for him. Make it £50,” Sweeney decides.
It’s not long until he is then summoned back downstairs by kit lady Sue Matthews. A jersey is missing.
The players are allowed to swap theirs but it comes at a cost; everything does. Sue estimates that each batch of kit is £300 to bring up to EFL code, with the badges on the sleeves £1.21 each, the letters for players’ names 30p each, and numbers more than £1.
Then she just has to worry about actually cleaning the gear. “Especially when you have Sweeney’s backside sliding across the ground,” she teases, leaning in for a hug.
Before doing some gym work and activation ahead of the 11am start “on the grass”, the manager calls a meeting with players and coaching staff for 10am to go over the plan for the game with Cheltenham Town the following day. Exeter can go top with a win while the visitors are bottom of the table and yet to score a goal in their opening six games.
It’s just over four minutes long.
The 42 stays at the back of the room as Caldwell emphasises some key points with clips: where he wants his players to force them to play, when to go man-to-man, and why not to allow them time to play long balls.
“Encourage them to play if we can. We want to encourage someone to get the ball [for them], which we will tell you tomorrow, and make them force passes. Once they get time and space, they will go long.”
Sweeney and the rest of his teammates head back downstairs to the gym, where the clear sliding doors open towards the pitches.
Assistant manager Kevin Nicholson has time for another tea with honey and recalls his time as boss of Torquay United, where he worked with current Cork City striker Ruairí Keating and shares his condolences following the death of his father. “Ruairí is a great person, a lovely person with a great attitude. I wish I had more time to work with him.”
Football is a small world, even in a place like this that seems so detached. “Once you come down here, you’re stuck,” Nicholson jokes.
With the first team occupying the gym, the U18s have already made their way out to their pitch to begin their morning’s work. Except for one. Left-sided player Kye Cooper has an issue with tendonitis in his knee and, after discussion with the coaches, has made the decision to sit out this session.
Another of his teammates is rehabbing a torn ACL.
Cooper is 16 and has been with the club for two years, his family spending close to £14,000 on fuel during that time after joining from his local side Yeovil Town more than 50 miles away when relegation from the Football League led to their academy closing.
Exeter’s, on the other hand, is thriving with an estimated £25 million earned over the last 20 years from sales, tribunal fees and add-ons.
Ethan Ampadau, now at Leeds United, and Ollie Watkins of Aston Villa, are two of the most high profile graduates, but scores of success stories have emerged and are scattered throughout the English pyramid.
Cooper hopes to be one of the next but as he watches on enviously from the balcony, it is one of his peers, Jake Edwards, who is already being touted for an England U17 call-up. The talented midfielder made his first-team debut this season and will train alongside Sweeney today.
It is an eclectic squad, summed up by the three-box rondo game as part of the warm-up.
“Dog and Duck here, League One there, Champions League up the top,” Nicholson shouts as he filters the players along. “So it’s elite, not bad, and crap at this end,” he bellows with a smile to reinforce the message.
The honey in his tea was needed.
The aim is to get 15 passes and the best and worst player is voted each time, passing from box to box accordingly.
When Sweeney is nutmegged by centre back partner and team captain Will Aimson, the roars of delight can be heard all over. That’s automatic relegation.
Caldwell gets involved in the Champions League box – only fair given he played in the competition for Celtic and later won the FA Cup with Wigan Athletic after becoming a Premier League player.
Former Manchester United defender Demetri Mitchell is another, as is coach Nicky Ajose who also emerged from the Old Trafford academy and finished his playing days with Exeter.
Two new signings are also about to make their debuts the following day. The 31-year-old Yanic Wildschut learned his trade at Ajax and worked with Caldwell at Wigan before a £7m move to Norwich City.
He agreed a short-term deal until January, along with Caleb Watts, 10 years his junior, who had been without a club following his release by Southampton in July.
Now they have another chance to be part of a side being moulded by Caldwell.
The team for Cheltenham has been picked by the manager before training starts. “Unless someone is a bag of washing,” Caldwell laughs.
Another key figure is 31-year-old Tom Carroll, the former Tottenham Hotspur midfielder who effectively took a year-long sabbatical from the game after his contract wasn’t renewed by Ipswich Town in the summer of 2022.
He signed a one-year contract in July after a trial and is watching training from the side after having an injection in his leg in the hope it helps him play.
“I’ll be sitting beside you eating chips if it doesn’t,” he smiles.
As the session continues and the intensity increases, two strikers get a tongue-lashing from the manager when they make two passes too many in a one-on-one situation.
“Fuck off you two. Make it real!”
When a midfielder set to play the following day switches off and loses a runner in the 11 v 11 game, there is another shout easily discernible amid the din from a drone flying overhead.
“That can’t happen. That can’t happen. We have to get this right. That’s how they score,” Caldwell demands.
The point is made, explained, and nothing is laboured.
There are a few set-pieces from each side of the pitch (attacking and defending) and then a small-sided game where three teams are involved. Each take turns playing from outside of the cones with the other two inside an area covering roughly one quarter of the pitch.
Caldwell wants to create an environment that doesn’t just allow players at various stages of their career to thrive. It forces them.
This doesn’t feel like a place to settle down and relax.
How does that work when you’re Mr. Exeter?
How does that feel when you’ve just turned 29, have only known lower league senior football in England, and have a contract for two more seasons after this one?
“I fucking love it,” Sweeney says over lunch in the canteen after training.
“I love that the manager has sparked something different in my brain. I’ve taken to the club probably too literally. The club is comfortable where it’s at and that’s filtered into me being comfortable where I’m at: racking up games, racking up appearances, becoming ‘a club legend’, and just being comfortable with that.
“Now I want more than that and that’s come from the manager making me think about it. We believe we can get this club to the Championship and the manager has made me believe I can get more from myself in the next stage of my career.”
Just as The 42 is invited into Caldwell’s office, the former Scotland international stands on one of the armchairs to see Wildschut being interviewed by club media after his unveiling. He will wear the number 13 jersey.
“Number 13, Yannick, number 13! That’s because you’re bad news for defenders!”
There are two frames with pictures on the wall. One has two photographs on top of each other: Caldwell on his knees when relegation from the Premier League with Wigan was all-but confirmed, and then a few days later, lifting the FA Cup after shocking Manchester City in 2013.
The other is of him and his brother Steven side by side following a Scotland international. It is of even more significance to him as Steven is wearing the number 13 shirt and he has 14.
“1314 was the Battle of Bannockburn, Scotland against England, and that is the area we’re from,” he explains.
Caldwell has taken some of the principles learned during his time working under Roberto Martinez at Wigan as well as some of the motivation techniques Gordon Strachan utilised at Celtic.
He retains an idealist’s manifesto backboned by a realist’s experiences. “I’ve lost my job three times as a manager (at Wigan, Chesterfield and Partick Thistle). The longest I’ve lasted is 18 months and I’m not far away from that now,” he laughs.
“But if all you focus on is winning, then it is not an enjoyable job. I want to help players, I want them to enjoy coming in here and wanting to get better.
“I said it to Sweens (Pierce), ‘You either take this team into the Championship or why can’t you play there?’ He’d say to me, ‘Aw’, and gave this or that reason. No. I went, ‘You can fix that. We can help you get better’. Players think, ‘This is where I am now, this is my level now’. Some get comfortable and go, ‘I can cope with this’. Some lose a little bit of faith because it’s hard, it’s a grind.
“My job is to rekindle that and give them motivation to be better, then support them to get better. Sweens will be the first to tell you, I love him, I get on great with him, but I’m hard on him. I never let him away with anything. I have him in here going through clips telling him ‘that’s not good enough’ because he is technically a fantastic footballer.
“His biggest challenge is his physicality; he’s not naturally a fit guy. He has to work extremely hard. I was similar in terms of body shape, as you can see now. For Sweens to be in prime physical condition, he has to work hard, he has to be pushed.
“He will tell you himself that he’s naturally a lazy person, which isn’t a negative. It’s who he is. We have to know that because I have to know to stay on him. I gave Sweens the book Atomic Habits. He never read it, I just found that out. He listened to it. About how to build habits; if you’re in a good, positive habit or in a bad one, you can change that cycle. This is perfect for him.
“He has to change some bad habits and build positive habits,” Caldwell continues, expanding further.
“Like, ‘I’m here because it’s comfortable’. We’re like, ‘You have to change that mentality’. One, to lead this team to the Championship, or maybe one day you do? Ideally I would have met Sweens seven or eight years ago and gave him this kind of chat and this motivation then.
“But why not now? It’s not too late for him.”
Ajose describes Sweeney as “a moaner”, but still speaks with a fondness. “What I love about Pierce is that he has been written off, he’s been out of the picture, and told what he needed to change or do differently.”
He did leave in the summer of 2021 when a deal to Swindon Town was announced and then scrapped 24 hours later because of financial issues, a change of manager, and the small matter of not actually registering it with the EFL. Exeter then offered him a route back having tried to cut his wages before the Swindon fiasco.
“Some of the stuff that has happened, it’s probably been for the best. It’s shown me they will still get rid of me if they want to.”
Technical director Flitcroft, who has worked his way up to the role after starting on an internship as an analyst 10 years ago, is ushered over.
“Yeah, Pierce has come back from the dead a few times. He’s even had his number taken off him.”
Just before 4pm, as we leave the training ground and head for home in the nearby town of Crediton – sandwiched amid the hills of Exmoor to the north and Dartmoor to the south – this is the topic of conversation as TalkSport chatter on the radio about the latest Premier League soap opera involving Jadon Sancho and Manchester United blends into the background.
“I got put on the transfer list after our last play-off final [defeat in 2020] because I was told I was shouting at players too much, I was told they didn’t want me around. I was ridiculed for it but it wasn’t something coming from other players; it was the manager at the time. Fair enough, that’s how football works.
“But I’m not shouting and screaming for nothing. I’m trying to help people. The manager now encourages it, it’s about being constructive with it. This is where the respect thing comes in. Some players can be arrogant towards it, some might be able to earn a million quid a year and behave like a bag of shit and not care. That’s not me, I’m not earning that money and I don’t behave like that.
“Players can have their heads in the clouds and never look at themselves and think, ‘Fucking hell, you’re right’. So when this manager, who has played for Scotland, played for Celtic, played in the Premier League and in the Champions League and worked hard for it, if he tells me how I can get better, how I am capable of getting better, and how to do it, I’d be stupid not to listen.
“And thankfully it’s not too late. It might not happen, I might not get up to the Championship and be able to earn more money for my family, because that is definitely an aim. Some people probably think I’d be a millionaire from being involved in football, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I’m all in for this because I have to provide and there is a different ambition there now because the manager has seen more potential in me.”
***
AS THE CAR pulls off the narrow country road into the driveway, six chickens approach.
A duck also weaves its way up from the small pond, past the life-sized statue of a woman with one breast exposed and her arms clasped together across her forehead.
There is a washing line with some childrens’ clothes drying, and at the bottom of the garden, on a plot of half an acre, is the wooden treehouse and swing set.
At the other end is the covered decking with a hot tub and shed with a dartboard, couch and homemade bar.
Dotty, the pregnant cockapoo, is over to the car like a light and quickly followed by another, Daisy.
Three-year-old daughter Myla hears the door open and runs out of the playroom. One-year-old son Freddie isn’t far behind.
“He was a bold boy today,” Jadeine informs Pierce. “He got hold of the eggs I got for your pre-match [breakfast] and smashed all six of them all over the floor… So, welcome to the Dingle house!” she beams. “Enjoy the madness.”
She is prepping some onions and tomatoes for the pasta sauce to go with dinner later and has the kids’ plates already set on the table. Pierce corrals them into their places.
Myla is in no mood to eat while Freddie has more fun throwing his grub on the floor for the dogs. A television sits on top of their metal kennel with blankets and covers inside.
It will soon be bath and bedtime for the kids. Jadeine’s stepfather Aiden will be home from work just after 5pm, and her mother Amanda will be closer to 8pm by the time her shift in the hospital finishes.
Not that there is time to relax. How can there be with two young children and an extra visitor to contend with?
Pierce tells the story of the first game of this season away to Wycombe Wanderers when Jadeine phoned in a panic just as he was about to go out for his warm up.
“She thought Freddie had swallowed part of one of his dinosaur toys. I’m five hours away, I can’t do anything. You feel helpless. What can you do? I’m about to play the match. That’s going through my head but luckily he was OK.”
They made the decision to move in with Amanda and Aiden a few months ago after various attempts to sell their own home fell through. They’ve opted to rent it out instead as they plan for life beyond football, biding their time to try and find somewhere locally to find a house to make their own.
“I’m going to have to find another way to help provide,” he explains. “That’s the reality.”
“We’re lucky that Pierce hasn’t moved around and we’ve been able to settle,” Jadeine says. “But I’d move to Ireland in a heartbeat. I love it.”
She’s flying to Dublin and then on to Wicklow the following morning, taking Amanda with her for her mother’s first ever trip. Sarina, Pierce’s older sister, will be a welcome host. A night out in the Martello in Bray awaits.
Jadeine is even looking forward to the hangover. “With a chicken fillet roll and a can of Club Lemon. I’ll bring a crate of it back with me.”
But that feels a long way away now and, as Aiden’s car pulls up, that’s her cue to organise bath time.
“You can finish off sorting the dinner,” she says to Pierce.
It’s not long until Aiden and Pierce are working in tandem in the kitchen. Searing onions, cooking tomatoes, stripping and then grilling chicken (from Tesco, not the garden) in the George Foreman.
Aiden is a former Royal Marine whose first tour was in Northern Ireland in 1999. He remembers getting told off by colleagues for trying to be friendly with local children, instigating BMX bike trick battles between them and letting them inspect his gun as a reward. “Once I’d made it safe,” he insists. “They were only kids, I wanted to treat them nice.”
A 40 Commando, Aiden was en route home from an exercise in the Mediterranean when the 9/11 attacks occured. He was rerouted to Afghanistan as part of Operation Veritas, and later served in Iraq as the war continued before being medically discharged due to partial loss of hearing.
“It’s only years later you wonder why? What was the point? But I still find it hard to adjust to Civvy Street.”
Myla sprints back down the stairs and runs into his arms. She’s had her bath and wants to feed the angelfish in the tank beside the fridge before going back up to her mammy for bed.
The tomatoes and onions go in the blender as the sauce gets the finishing touches. The smart electricity meter above the microwave reads £56.60.
Pierce is about to check on progress with the kids but just as he does Jadeine returns. “Might have to bring him (Freddie) for a drive in the car to get him asleep,” she sighs. “See how it goes.”
Once he has settled and the evening trip isn’t required, Jadeine pours herself a crisp glass of white wine.
Everyone is tired but the chicken and pasta is demolished. Pierce leaves a plate in the microwave for Amanda and when she arrives through the door, she brings an energy to the room that gives everyone a second wind.
“OH MY GOD, WHAT A DAY!” she yelps, taking a seat across from her daughter.
“Sssssh, you’ll wake up the kids!” Jadiene says.
“Ooof, tell me about it, last night was hell,” Amanda replies.
She sees Pierce still in the kitchen, introduces herself to The 42, and continues as if we’re a neighbour in for a regular chat.
“You’re letting him cook,” Amanda teases.
“What did I say to you? First thing she’ll do is hammer me,” he says.
“Have you done me some? Oh, thanks P Dog. Mr Pee Pee, that’s what I call him.”
“Ah here, making a holy show of me now,” he laughs.
“I will. Pierce does everything I ask him to do,” Amanda says.
“We all do! We all do. You say jump and we say how high. Sure we all voted for Brexit because of you! You made us!” Pierce adds.
“I did not make you.”
“You did,” Jadeine insists.
“We were lied to. That liar Boris Johnson told us we would get millions going back to the NHS. I believed him because we need that money in the NHS. I really believed him. What a mistake. That’s one of my biggest life regrets you know.”
“What? Not marrying Aid?” Pierce laughs.
“Oi you!”
“You’ve got to be careful,” Pierce teases, recalling how he and Jadeine met on Tinder and initially told her he was a builder.
“You can get some gold diggers, ya know what I mean?”
“Yeah, with all of the money you have?” Jadeine adds playfully. “Want me to show you all my Chanel and Louis Vuitton bags?”
“What, the ones from Turkey?” Amanda delivers with perfect timing.
Aiden reappears once he realises his wife is home.
“Hello my love,” he says, kissing her on the forehead as she leans back and looks up from her seat.
“Hello my darling,” she responds, just as he buries his head in the fridge and suggests a piece of chocolate trifle.
“Have you packed for tomorrow,” Jadeine asks her mam.
“No, I’ve done nothing. Have you?”
“No.”
“I am excited though.”
And it’s easy to tell. Conversation over the next hour or so zig zags between all manner of topics.
There is more Brexit chat.
There is an actual discussion between a footballer, a nurse and a soldier about wages and who deserves what, although Aiden prefers to take his piece of trifle into the sitting room and enjoy it in peace.
Amanda has never been to Ireland and talk turns to spice bags, crisps, and history.
“We don’t get taught anything of what really went on in our schools,” Jadeine says.
Pierce does his best to explain hurling – he played with Bray Emmets up until the age of 14 and has two hurls in the house that were given to him by his friend, Wicklow captain Jack Henderson.
“So it’s like a rough egg and spoon race,” Amanda teases again. “Oh, you’re hard!”
Then it’s on to music and films.
The Magdalene Sisters is brought up. “What’s it about? Amanda asks.
She is told and seems on the brink of tears.
“Mum, you have to watch it,” Jadeine says.
“They shamed women and controlled them,” Pierce adds. “This was still happening [in the 1980s and early 90s]. So when my mum [Tracy] gave birth to my brother in 1993 and sister before then [in the late 80s], she would have needed to be backed up because she never married.”
Aiden makes his way back into the kitchen looking for more trifle and the atmosphere is a bit different than before.
Amanda and Jadeine have an early flight to catch and Pierce has a match the following day.
It’s time for bed, but there is more to discuss.
***
PAUL DOOLIN and the late Eamon Dolan are on Sweeney’s mind on the drive towards St James’ Park for the 3pm kick off with Cheltenham Town.
The kids have slept well and even though he was awake just after 5.30am, got locked in the downstairs toilet and needed Aiden to get him out, he is in good form.
Dolan was the head of academy at Reading when he chose to join the club instead of Everton having broken into Bray Wanderers’ first team under Pat Devlin and Keith Long in 2012.
“Everton tried to entice me to sign for them by offering me a big bag of their gear, but it was all the old Le Coq Sportif stuff from the season before. I had a week at Liverpool too, and was supposed to go back for another week, but Kenny Dalglish got sacked in between.”
Leicester City and West Brom offered scholar contracts but no guarantee of a pro deal, so he rejected them, while he stunk the place out during his trial at Blackburn Rovers and even though he was told there would be no contract, he was asked if he could put in a good word for them with his friend Darragh Lenihan.
“He ended up going there and we’re still really good mates today. I was at his wedding and he deserves everything he has got.”
The pair are also locked in an interesting battle. Since the 20/21 campaign, Stats Perform report that Sweeney and Lenihan are second and third respectively in the league appearances’ chart for Irish players in English football. Sweeney is on 132, Lenihan 130 while Lincoln City captain Paudie O’Connor is on 137. John Egan and Stephen Quinn are tied on 126.
“Not bad going that,” he says.
Ten years ago, Sweeney was voted Republic of Ireland U19 international player of the year. He was in his second year at Reading and felt on the cusp of something, especially when Nigel Adkins and then Steve Clarke earmarked him for a breakthrough.
“Eamon was the reason for that. He never made you feel comfortable around him, I mean that in the sense he always wanted you to be pushing yourself forward. He wanted every single one of us to make it to the first team.
“But I made a bollox of it. I didn’t do more than I should [when training with the first team]. I did enough but not more than I should.”
Sweeney represented his country at underage level, and it was the memories of his time playing for Doolin’s U19s that flashed back.
“He would make us laugh without even knowing it. There would be a passing drill and all you’d hear in a big Dublin accent was him shouting, ‘WHO’S GOING TO FUCK IT UP? WHO’S GOING TO FUCK IT UP?’ The lads born in England would be looking at him like ‘what?’ and the rest of us would be in stitches.’WHO’S GOING TO FUCK IT UP? WHO’S GOING TO FUCK IT UP?”‘
Sweeney is still laughing at the thought of that by the time he arrives to the ground just after 1pm.
The smiling Finn, Ilmari Niskanen, is greeted by fans too.
More queue for a drink at the Thatchers Cider hut opposite the small club shop.
Upstairs in the newly-renovated Heritage Lounge, Julian Tagg mingles with more supporters while the early Premier League kick off between Wolves and Liverpool enters the second half.
“This club is 100% democratic, but that doesn’t mean we have the blueprint for everything that is right,” Tagg, the club’s President and Director of Football and External Affairs, tells The 42.
“Every day, every week is a fight to find a way to make it work. We have our strengths and our weaknesses but we’ve been doing it for 20 years. Every club says it is a family club, how often do you hear it, but the difference is that this one is owned by the family.
“There is no overdraft, we don’t owe a penny, and we’ve got money in the bank.”
Some of the numbers are stark.
Exeter’s playing budget is in the region of £1.5 million per year; some other clubs in the third tier have almost four times that amount.
When they played Sheffield Wednesday – promoted through the play-offs last season – one of their star names was earning roughly £20,000 per week compared to a few hundred an academy graduate in their starting XI that afternoon was being paid.
“Then we have to worry about the clubs coming from behind us,” Tagg adds.
No wonder, given one of Sweeney’s former Exeter teammates is now earning £75,000 more per year with a League Two club.
Exeter end the afternoon with another three points – making it five wins, one draw and two defeats from the opening eight games – after a comfortable 1-0 win that could easily have been two or three on another day.
New signing Watts comes off the bench to score, while Carroll’s injection pays off; he is the best player on the pitch throughout the 90 minutes.
“Felt good, better out there than up there [in the stands],” he laughs, as his manager appears from the home dressing room.
“Made it hard for ourselves. Take the clean sheet, though.”
Flitcroft strides by giving a dig out by carrying a box of cones used in the warm ups and after a brief chat about the day’s results and the fortunes of the Ireland team, he shows a text on his phone from a year previously in which he had suggested Evan Ferguson as a loan option. “But there was no chance. Everyone was after him.”
Cheltenham offer little and limp to their sixth defeat from seven games, without a goal but still, somehow, off the bottom on goal difference. As the players leave the field, some away fans approach to let off steam.
One is effing and blinding while pointing his finger furiously at each player who dares come into his line of sight. Former Premier League defender Curtis Davies is one of them. In the fan’s other arm he holds a baby girl, no older than one and presumably his daughter, before another woman takes the child and the man continues to remonstrate.
Their captain, Sean Long, is one of those on the end of the barrage. The Dubliner heads down the tunnel to the away dressing room where the Cheltenham manager keeps the players locked in for a more intimate critique.
Long and Sweeney shared digs together at Reading for four years and after both being released went their separate ways to forge their careers. By the time he emerges, texting to see if his old pal is still around, Sweeney and The 42 are almost back home.
The chickens are waiting. So is the duck.
It also quickly becomes clear that one of the dogs has walked his own dirt into the house.
“In the door less than a minute and already clearing up shite,” Sweeney laughs, as he gets the mop out and has Freddie for company wanting to help.
With Amanda and Jadeine away, Aiden has been on full-time grandad duty.
Myla climbs onto one of the stools by the kitchen island and asks her father for a banana. He peels it for her, Aiden and Pierce then start singing the Banana in Pyjamas song together and she gets involved briefly before spitting out the bite she took and handing it back to Pierce.
Once he has managed to get the kids both asleep, with the monitor alerts on his watch, it is time for darts and a drink in the converted shed out the back.
San Miguel for The 42, Pepsi Max for Sweeney, and cider for Aiden.
“Look at that, a 50-year-old former Marine drinking Kopparberg,” he teases.
Sweeney tells the story of drinking a pint of Guinness for the first time with Paul McShane when he had just turned 21 while at Reading.
He remembers Ian Harte — who wore size 6 and 1/2 boots despite being an 8 because he liked to have his toes curled — turning up with a bin bag full of all his old designer clothes and letting the trainees have their pick at Christmas. “Lads waking about in D&G t-shirts and shoes for months after,” Sweeney laughs.
After Aiden heads for bed and the pitch black sets in, something has stuck in the head.
When he signed for Reading, it was Bray boss Pat Devlin and his mother Tracy who accompanied Sweeney.
When he spoke about The Magdalene Laundries and the actions of the Catholic Church, he referenced Tracy and a future she might have faced as an unmarried mother had her family not supported her.
He never mentioned his father, Fiachra, with whom he didn’t have any relationship from a young age.
As we sit back in his car, parked up outside the nearby B&B that The 42 has checked into for the night, Sweeney explains.
“My ma asked me three or four years ago, she was going [to visit him] with my brother, did I want to come? No. I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I batted it away and put it on the back burner.
“Then he died in April this year.”
Sweeney travelled back to Ballina in Mayo to attend the funeral with his mother and brother and their partners, and met his half-brother and half-sister there for the first time.
“I didn’t know him so it was a strange situation at the funeral. I had no emotion towards the immediate death of him… it was a stranger, ye know. I know it’s my blood da but there was no emotional connection, no relationship.
“I was asked to carry the coffin, I couldn’t say no. I did it for other people’s sake, I suppose, but it was hard when you have no connection.
“It was a strange situation, meeting other family for the first time at the funeral, then [Fiachra’s brother] was fucking comical when he did his reading. He couldn’t help himself doing impersonations of his brother. He had everyone else in stitches.
“I don’t know, I’m glad I went. It was something I needed to do but I was nervous as fuck. I can play football in front of thousands of people but going to that funeral with family I’ve never met made me confront stuff that I never wanted to.
“I thought I would take it better than I did because I had no emotion, but it was having to face stuff I never faced before. Being the age I am now, being 29 and hopefully having a bit more of an understanding what life is like, no one is perfect. There are situations where shit things happen.
“But when people were coming up going, ‘You’re the image of your dad’, that got me. I was thinking, ‘Yeah, sound, I don’t know him’. But I smiled, I said thanks. What else could you do?
“I was there out of respect for my ma and my aunties and uncle.”
The morning after the funeral, Sweeney returned to England and played in a 6-0 defeat to Ipswich Town at Portman Road as they won promotion to the Championship.
“I never speak to my ma about this. She didn’t want to show emotion, the same growing up. Her boyfriend Liam is a gentle giant. He only moved in officially when we all moved out. He would always be there for us.
“But when she wanted to show emotion, if she wanted to burst into tears, she’d go for a drive in the car.
“She wouldn’t do it in front of us, we knew she was doing it but we wouldn’t see it. She’d do it in the car.”