JUST TWO MONTHS since declaring himself “delighted” to have joined a new club, Tommie Hoban is spending his days in front of a laptop at Costa Coffee instead of on the training ground preparing for the next pursuit of three points.
He’ll miss the craic and camaraderie of bus journeys to away games, but he expects that to be tempered by the freedom to make plans for the weekend, the scope to spend more time with his partner and two children, and the guilt-free increase in his cake consumption.
After leaving Aberdeen at the end of last season, he signed for League One side Crewe Alexandra in July. Although the Premier League dream had already been relinquished, a return to Championship level football seemed attainable.
Despite signing for Crewe with honest intentions, the records will show that Hoban, a 27-year-old centre-back, never played for them in a competitive fixture.
For a footballer, a move to a new club often triggers a renewed vigour for the game. It’s an opportunity to turn over a new leaf, to make the next chapter better than the last. However, no such enthusiasm accompanied Hoban’s arrival in Crewe.
Burying his head in the sand by hoping for an overnight change of mindset would have served neither him, nor the club who had just given him a contract, well. Therefore, a journey that began as a seven-year-old in the Arsenal academy is now at an end.
“Football has been my life since I was a kid and I’ve put so much into it, so I didn’t want to just give up on it too easily,” Hoban says when explaining his decision to retire.
“By signing for Crewe I was hoping that I would rediscover the level of love for the game that I had before. I’m not saying the love had completely gone, because I did still enjoy playing, but that spark that I could see in the other boys was just no longer there.
“I probably put on a front, hiding it, acting like everything was fine. I wasn’t depressed or anything like that, but I felt like I was having to force the enjoyment rather than it being there naturally, like it always had been.
“Unfortunately as pre-season went on at Crewe, nothing was changing. On top of that, even though I did come back from the injuries I’ve had, I’m not the same physically as I was five years ago.”
A defeat to Rangers back in May turned out to be Hoban’s final game as a professional. It was his 43rd appearance of the season, but only the 127th of a career that was beset by a variety of long-term injuries.
Shoulder, ankle and pelvic issues, as well as a couple of anterior cruciate knee ligament [ACL] ruptures, curtailed his ability to fulfil the potential he displayed after debuting for Watford as a 17-year-old on the final day of the 2010-11 Championship season.
“Right now,” he says, “at 27, I should be feeling fitter than ever and in the prime of my career, but I was dealing with a lot of different things pain-wise. I actually can’t remember the last time I played a game without having to take tablets beforehand.
“It was becoming more and more of a grind. I didn’t want to get to a stage where I’d play for another five or six years and end up hating football completely.
“Ultimately there were a few factors in retiring, but my ankle had been quite sore so getting through training was a struggle. I felt like I was limping around. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to rest for a couple of weeks just to get back again.
“I came home and said to Christina [his partner], ‘I don’t think I can go back tomorrow, I really don’t want to do it’. We started speaking and it just went from there.”
Hoban is keen to stress that he hasn’t been forced into retirement by injury. In spite of all his setbacks, no outfield player featured more often for Aberdeen last season. If the mind was willing, the body would have followed.
“They definitely had an impact and I don’t feel how I would want to at this age, but the injuries aren’t the reason I’ve retired. Physically I could definitely have kept going,” he says.
“It sounds bad, but it just got to the stage where I wasn’t enjoying training at all. The thought of going in and doing a passing drill wasn’t doing anything for me. My head wasn’t there and there was no enjoyment in it. Thinking about starting something like a business outside of football became more exciting than the thought of being a footballer.
“One of my friends asked me to come down and play in a seven-a-side game last week and I was genuinely more excited for that than I have been for any football match in ages.”
Hailed as “an unbelievable talent” by manager Gianfranco Zola, the performances produced by Hoban following his breakthrough at Watford generated interest from clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United.
On the international stage, the Londoner’s allegiance was determined by his Irish background. His mother hails from Dublin, his father’s parents from Westport and Limerick.
As Martin O’Neill monitored him with a view to a senior call-up, Hoban captained Republic of Ireland U21 sides that included Josh Cullen, Jack Byrne, Callum O’Dowda, Alan Browne and Jack Grealish.
Upon his return from the knee injury that deprived him of the opportunity to play for Watford in the Premier League during the 2017-18 season, Hoban was sent out on loan to Aberdeen in a bid to get back up to speed after a year on the sidelines.
He was impressing in Scotland until his progress was halted by another ACL injury. The expiry of his Watford contract a few months later complicated the recovery process.
His return to full fitness coincided with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, so Hoban – who also previously spent time on loan at Blackburn Rovers – hadn’t played a game in nearly 18 months by the time Aberdeen brought him back for the beginning of last season.
Each comeback was justifiably classed as a success, yet the physical cost of so many injuries was making it increasingly difficult for Hoban to reach the standards that were once set by a man who played 30 times as Watford were promoted to the Premier League.
“I’d never go down the ‘poor me’ road because every player has injury setbacks, but I do feel like they had a big impact on the player I was, especially the second [ACL] one,” he says.
“A lot of the rehab was done on my own. I didn’t have access to a club so I wasn’t with physios every day. The rehab wasn’t quite to the level it could have been because of that.
“Physically and athletically I always felt I was quite good for a defender and it was a big part of my game, but I definitely wasn’t at the same level I was before.
“It’s hard to explain because it’s not like it was pain that was stopping me, but it’s like your body doesn’t trust itself as much as it used to. I was thinking about things so much more instead of it just coming naturally.
“I felt that took away maybe 5% or 10% of my capabilities, and at elite-level football where it can come down to 1% to make a difference in a game, that’s quite a lot to lose.
“It became really frustrating because I knew how I was before and how I wanted to be. Even though I was still at quite a good level, I just wasn’t able to get that back.
“Even last year when I was at Aberdeen, I felt I had a very good season in terms of playing almost all of the games and I enjoyed living up there, but it just wasn’t quite the same as it had been.
“I didn’t seem to have the same sort of hunger or drive that I once had when I was a young lad coming through at Watford. It felt like there was something missing.”
As the frequency of the injuries brought Hoban into closer proximity with the prospect of retirement, the edge was gradually taken off the fear of what it might be like to walk away from the game that has shaped his life.
“In the last two or three years, the thought of retirement had been on my mind more than once. After my last ACL injury I was very close to deciding to stop then.
“During that time I sort of came up with a plan of what I could do after football. Having that plan, and the fact that I was without a team for a year, it sort of made it easier to consider the thought of transitioning to the next stage of life.”
Last season was – based on the volume of games he played – the most successful of Hoban’s career, making the timing of his decision to retire somewhat surprising. After years of rotten luck, it appeared that he had finally been freed from the shackles of injury.
In the end, proving that he could withstand the rigours of a full season of professional football only served to provide Hoban with the closure that has allowed him to go out on his own terms.
He explains: “For so long, the only thing in my head was that I needed to get fit. It was my only goal in life and every single day I was working towards getting myself free of pain and back into a position where I could play. It was about proving it to myself rather anyone else.
“I think if I had been forced into quitting at that stage, I would forever have had this feeling of ‘what if’, and the thought that it had been taken away from me would have been much harder to accept. The fact that I got back and proved I could do it was massive to me.
“I’m so happy and grateful to Aberdeen for giving me the chance to do that. I know myself that I could carry on playing now if I wanted to. The reality is that it’s not making me as happy as I expected it to. I thought for so long that everything would be great if I could get fit again, but that wasn’t the case – and I’ve accepted now that that’s okay too.
“The experiences life throws at you, they change you as a person. On average, I think I heard that people change their career every three-to-five years. Just because you’re a footballer it comes as a big shock to everyone.”
That the life of a professional footballer is one so few abandon of their own volition was something Hoban refused to be influenced by when he realised he was approaching a career crossroads.
Acknowledging that he was among the tiny fraction of aspiring players who make it to such a high level, he doesn’t lack gratitude for the privileges the game presented him with.
Nevertheless, footballers being duty-bound to hang in there until the bitter end, in the hope that the juice will be worth the squeeze, is a tenet that Hoban doesn’t endorse.
“Unless you’ve been in a person’s shoes then you don’t know what’s going on in their head,” he says. “It’s so many people’s dream to be a professional footballer and the life of a footballer can be really special.
“I wouldn’t change anything about my career because the experiences I’ve had have been incredible. I’ve met so many incredible people and it opened a lot of doors for me.
“At the same time, when something is no longer giving you what you want from life, you have to see that for what it is. You only get one chance on this earth and you don’t know what’s around the corner.
“I’d rather spend my days doing something that I feel is right for me and my family, something that will allow us all to be happy, rather than continuing to do something just because everyone else thinks you should, or because it’s what you’ve always done before.
“When I announced I was retiring, I kind of almost felt guilty and embarrassed, like there was a sense of shame, that I was quitting. It was a weird feeling because I was quite nervous about what people would say.
“Some of the same people who tried to persuade me not to retire are also some of the ones who say they don’t want to play anymore and wish they were doing something else. There’s a stigma in football about having to stay in the game until the very end. It’s a perception that the longer your career is, the more successful you are.
“If you’re a player who keeps going until you’re 38 and it makes you happy, regardless of how much money you’re earning, then that’s absolutely brilliant. Good for you, genuinely.
“But if you’re not happy and you could have had an opportunity to build a new life away from football, where you might have a better family life and maybe even do better financially, it doesn’t make much sense to me if you don’t take that opportunity just because someone says turning your back on football is something you just shouldn’t do.”
Aided by his father, who has a couple of decades of experience as a financial adviser, Hoban counts himself fortunate to be in a position where he feels confident enough to believe that there are opportunities for him outside the football bubble.
For many of his peers, some of whom are institutionalised by a game that has consumed them from a young age, the thought of attempting to earn a living elsewhere is a risk too daunting to take.
Hoban adds: “I’ve spoken to a lot of other boys in football and there are so many who have similar thoughts and toy with the idea [of retiring], but they don’t commit to the decision. Before they know it, they’re in the middle of another season and feel like they can’t do it then, so another year just sort of slips by.
“I’m obviously not trying to say that everyone should do it, but there are a lot of boys who probably would like to and for various reasons they don’t come to the decision. Depending on what options might be available to them, they could possibly be happier outside of football.
“Walking away from football is a huge decision and a very scary one. So many boys just have no idea what else they might do. It’s something I’ve seen at every club I’ve played for. You’re so focused on the games week-in-week-out that it’s hard to take yourself outside of that and think of what life will be like when it all finishes.
“Even if you do play into your late 30s, there’s still a lot of life to live after that. If you haven’t been playing at the top level, the chances are that you won’t have the luxury of being able to sit back and do whatever you want to. The lack of a plan for life outside football is a big part of why so many people avoid deciding to make that change.
“There’s also often a lack of financial planning during players’ careers that would help when football finishes and they’re trying to find something else. I’ve been lucky to have had very good financial advice from my dad, which has given me a cushion now to really think about how I want to move forward with a life that I want, instead of one that I’m forced into.”
Although he intends to forge his own path in the industry, Hoban is now working towards emulating his father by studying for a career in financial planning.
“The first step is getting the brain ticking over again,” he says. “Having left school at 16, your brain goes a bit soft – like any other muscle, I suppose, but it’s starting to come back bit by bit.
“Making the adjustment is something that I know will be difficult at times, but I also know that it’s right for me. Maybe there will be times when it hits me and I’ll question whether I’ve made the right decision, because that’s a natural thought process when you make a big change in your life, but I’m not expecting that there will be any doubts.
“I made the decision and I think it was definitely the right one for me personally. Hopefully that will continue to be the case.”