Damien Delaney spent four or five months “taking smoked salmon and Irish black pudding” off trucks working for Cork Airport duty-free as a teenager.



He had tried to get a job as a baggage handler at Aer Lingus to supplement the “80 Irish punts” (£70) he got every week playing for Cork City but failed the hearing test. But, he says, he was quite happy living at home, driving his “1990 Toyota Starlet, with 200,000 miles on the clock” and playing semi-professional football.



“My mum took most of it off me, anyway,” laughs the former Crystal Palace, Leicester and Ipswich defender. “She started charging me rent, so that was the end of that.”



For many footballers, the game is just a job. That much is true for Delaney, despite being 38 and now back in the south-west of Ireland where it all started. “I did my job and went home,” he says.



Delaney came to football relatively...