90% of Footballers Are Just Surviving: Sunderland’s Luke O’Nien Gets Brutally Honest

**Luke O'Nien** (0:03)
I think 90% of players are in this survival state. You take a touch, and it goes wrong. You start to hear the groans, you're like, I can feel it in my body now.
You don't just move yourself, you have to pick everything up, it's heavy. I got a phone call from my agent, Sunderland are interested, and I was like, I start in the midfield, got hooked at half time, one-nil down. The manager said it was for tactical reasons, which is a polite way of saying you were crap. I remember I used to get in before anyone would get there. I'd get in the pool, do the gym, and then as people would arrive, got on my phone in the toilets, just trying to avoid that social side of it, trying to protect myself, knowing that I've just had that bad experience.

**Jake** (0:44)
How long were you wounded for, do you think?

**Luke O'Nien** (0:55)
I think everybody needs therapy.
Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's just, it's a...

**Damian** (1:01)
Well, I always think, do you remember your uncle a few years ago saying, every player should have their own individual coach? He was saying this like 20 years ago, like every player should have an individual coach that, if you're a goalkeeper, what you need is a very different striker.

**Luke O'Nien** (1:14)
I tried to, I have minimum two.
I see kind of like, kind of two therapies, one for football, one for like everyday life. But like I'll carry that on for like the rest of my life.

**Jake** (1:26)
Did you intentionally have two therapists, one for home life and one for football life?

**Luke O'Nien** (1:31)
Not intentionally, but it worked out that way. Because I was always good at gravitating towards the next big thing that would help me go for. I didn't know that was that until I saw it and I was like, I need that.

**Damian** (1:44)
Did you hear the interview with Joe Hart on that?

**Luke O'Nien** (1:46)
I haven't seen that one yet, no.

**Damian** (1:47)
That's not because Hart goes to see Pellegrini and Pellegrini goes, you're something wrong with you, I don't know you, but I can't trust you. And then he goes and works for the coaching.
The guy goes to him, why don't you engage in like passive aggressive war with the goalkeeping coach? What do you know about his family? Nothing. He goes, he knows about your family. Won't mention it. What do you know about his wife? Nothing. I bet he knows about your wife. Yeah. Why don't you go and have a coffee with him and just find out? And he goes, one coffee, the whole relationship changed.

**Luke O'Nien** (2:18)
That's the bit I underestimated about football. That's the bit I massively underestimated about football.

**Jake** (2:22)
How do you mean?

**Damian** (2:25)
I...

**Luke O'Nien** (2:28)
That human connection. I spent a lot of time when I was a kid, just like how Johnny Wilkinson would explain it, just over the park, baggables in the gym, like obsessive, silly hours. I couldn't stop and didn't have that human connection. I was just like, it's just me and my dad sometimes. And then it was just me.
And that got me so far that I think I was just so used to just doing it by myself. Yeah.
I think. Still trying to work that bit out to you, honestly. Because that wasn't sustainable. So I'm at a stage now, like, you know what it's like with kids, kids, they poke the emotion out of you, and then they'll poke sometimes and then something will come out. And I'm like, whoa, where's that come from? So I'm trying to find ways to go back to the source.
So just emotion where they'll do something, I'd emotionally react, and there's no time to make a choice. So for example, my little girl will say something, or no, do something, and I'll go to raise my voice to her within a second of it happening. There's no delay in order for me to work out and process. She'll do something and I'll be ready to be like, what are you doing that for? And that's how I didn't want to be like that. There was no space there to decide. That make sense?

**Jake** (3:56)
Yes, and you're linking that to football because in football and in life, you need to take that moment to understand someone else before you bring yourself to the conversation, is that?

**Luke O'Nien** (4:08)
Not just like even other people, but also when you play football, you need to understand you might tackle me.
If I lose my head in the moment, I could cost the game. So it's also like learning that emotion for so many reasons, like being a dad, being a husband, being a player, being a teammate. Like that was just all so important.