Stephen Hunt has claimed that GAA players wouldn't have the "mental strength" to survive in the Premier League.

Writing in the Sunday Independent, the former Waterford underage hurler reckons most GAA players wouldn't be able to cope with the level of commitment that's required to be a top soccer player.

The Ipswich Town midfielder, capped 39 times by the Republic of Ireland, stated: "I heard Joe Brolly a couple of weeks ago saying that soccer players weren't role models. I think footballers can be role models, even if one or two let people down, but I get the impression with Joe that he feels we lack the spirit of the true Gaels he admires so much.

"As somebody who grew up in the GAA, I can tell you that, as much as I love the games, if GAA players tried to live with the level of commitment shown by a professional footballer, they wouldn't know what hit them.

"Of course, the headlines are taken by some player who falls out of a nightclub, but that isn't the reality for most Premier League players.

"When I was at Reading, I lived half a mile from the training ground. Each day, I would get in my car, which was of the required status for a Premier League footballer, and drive 800 yards to the training ground.

"I wasn't being flash, I just felt I had to rest. My life was dedicated to rest and then more rest. I would never go out and when I say 'go out', I don't mean a night out, I mean out. I never left the house. All I did was train and rest, train and rest.

"That sense of responsibility has never left me, even if as you move on in life and have kids, you have to leave the sofa every now and then. They can't make their own way home from school.

"A couple of weeks ago, I drove from Ipswich to meet a friend at the airport hotel in Stansted. As we were leaving later that day, I said to him that I shouldn't really have made the 45-minute journey as it was important that I rested. He knows a bit about football, but he was surprised that I would need to rest that much. It is all about rest and if you want to make it as a footballer, you have to understand that.

"It's such a mundane thing in so many ways, but I would say that more players fail to break through because they don't understand that. Of course, some of them aren't resting because they're in the pub or in a nightclub, which brings in other factors. They aren't resting and they are as far away from resting as they can be."

Hunt added: "There were times when I was younger when it was tough. I was released by Brentford when I was 24 and I hadn't made a penny from the game. Then I could have cut and run. I got an offer from Bradford and was going to sign a three-year contract. I arrived on a plane from Dublin and was ready to sign when I got a message from Steve Coppell, who was at Reading, and said he'd pay the same money for a one-year deal.

"The Bradford chairman was waiting for me in arrivals and I walked out and told him I want to sign for Reading.

"He persuaded me to come and do a medical anyway, but I knew I had to stay focused. After I did the medical, I told them I wanted to sign for Reading. Football is all about mental strength."

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