Niall Quinn is preparing for life after football

The phrase Niall Quinn has to keep repeating is “I’m not looking for the public’s sympathy with these guys.”

He said it on the terrace bar at the House of Lords in London last week, he said it again on the phone from his beloved Sunderland yesterday, and he’ll be saying it a lot in the coming weeks.

“These guys” are the Premier League footballers whose existences switch from living the dream to the stuff of nightmares when they retire. We’ve all seen the high-profile cases, from Paul McGrath to Gazza and more recently Kenny Sansom, the players who have fallen from the greatest of heights to rock bottom.