Anyone that gets a professional contract like Harper has done is, out of all the millions who play football and dream of making a living from it, extremely talented. They would be the outstanding player in their local sides, often competing against older age groups as they are usually too good for their own. And as Nick Hornby stated in his book, Fever Pitch, unlike musicians or people in other arts, you will never find an untapped genius footballer, tortured by his art.
But it’s funny how many players are accused of just sitting on the bench picking up their wages like it’s a terrible, merciless thing, while Harper is hailed as a ‘one-of-a-kind, loyal one club man’. Even with his career finished as a player at Newcastle, he has now gone to Hull City to spend 99 per cent of his employment time on their bench rather than finding first team football elsewhere. As his fellow Hull team mate, Danny Graham, said this week of his decision to leave Sunderland for the Tigers this summer, ”I could have quite happily sat around but I learned from a very young age you need to play. It’s massive and I knew it was time to leave.” Why didn’t Harper?
When the words, ‘‘happily sitting on the bench picking up their wages,’’ are uttered in that order, they are always used in derisory terms. But it isn’t when it comes to Harper even though this is what he did and will undoubtedly continue to do at Hull. Why is that? By all accounts he is not an arrogant, diva of a footballer where people will pick up on any indiscretion and blow it up out of all proportion unlike ones who have a somewhat bad reputation like Ashley Cole for example. A player like Cole would be crucified in the press and on the fan forums if he did the same.
I think ‘good luck to Steve Harper – you were at your local side and got to watch the club play every week’. As I said, he deserves some plaudits and recognition for doing better than millions of other people by getting anywhere near a squad place in an English Premier League team, and he is known as a decent human being throughout football, which is the most important thing. But does he really deserve so much accolade for settling for a place on the bench for virtually his whole career while many other players are lambasted for supposedly ‘not caring’ whether they play or not?
What do you think it is that makes Steve Harper stand out from footballers that are deemed not to care whether they sit on the bench as long as they pick up their wages?
Feel free to leave me any comments on here and/or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or YouTube:
https://www.facebook.com/rickymurraywriter, rickymurraywriter.tumblr.com, www.youtube.com/rickymurraymusic
ThisisFutbol.com are seeking new writers to join the team! If you’re passionate about football, drop us a line at “thisisfutbol.com@snack-media.com” to learn more.
a loyal club servant content to sit on the bench and pick up his salary and not rock the boat in any shape or form and then when he leaves he speaks out against the owners lack of ambition
classic