Stephen Hunt knows that comparing two sports is a pointless endeavour.
Ipswich midfielder Stephen Hunt has written another column for the Irish Independent in which he responds to Joe Brolly's accusations that soccer players are not role models for kids.
Brolly had been responding to Hunt's article last week in which the former Ireland international pointed out the differences between playing professional soccer and Gaelic Games.
RTÉ pundit Brolly hit back, saying 'thank f*ck I'm a GAA man' and insisting that Hunt would struggle in an Ulster club final, but Hunt has now come out fighting.
Hunt writes in the Independent today:
(Brolly) says he doesn't think I'd have lasted long in the Ulster club final. "I wouldn't fancy his chances standing on the edge of the square against Patsy Bradley," he said.
It doesn't surprise me that he retreats behind the macho wall of the Ulster Gaelic football culture and I guess if the contest isn't a sporting contest but is just some crude violent attack then maybe he's right.
Yet what Brolly says is merely speculation and we'll never know for certain how I'd get on in an Ulster final. What we can say for certain, and this was the point I was trying to make, is that most players who head from Ireland to England struggle in an environment which is as cruel and unforgiving as professional football.
This is a fact which doesn't need embellishing. When I said that GAA players "wouldn't know what hit them", I wasn't saying they couldn't make it - although so few have when they've tried - but that they would experience a massive culture shock if they were to move from high-level amateur sport to the Premier League.
Hunt's full column can be read
here.
