When the laughing has to stop

THE conventional wisdom that Stephen Hunt would be the life and soul of any party might have to be revisited in light of his shock revelation that he kept his mouth firmly zipped up during the high-spirited squad sing-song which erupted on the flight home to Dublin from Sofia in the wee hours of last Saturday morning.

“I wasn’t singing,” the Reading man confirms. “I’m the worst singer ever. Shane Long is the man. He’d be an X-Factor winner if he wasn’t a footballer, for sure.”

Although, for many of us on board that plane, the sight and sound of the boys in green in full-on party mode was something we hadn’t witnessed in quite some time, Hunt insists that, no they don’t only sing when they’re winning – or even, more to the point, drawing.