The biggest thing I've found since I left the game - and I'm glad I chose to leave rather than being sacked - is that so many people are in football for the wrong reasons. Not because they love the game, but because they smell money.

Very few of us have any idea whatsoever of what life is like living in a goldfish bowl, except, of course, for those of us who are goldfish.

I have to choose my words carefully because I don't want to sound like one of those who goes on about how things were better in my day.

Shearer could be at 100 per cent fitness, but not peak fitness.

I would like to be the best in the world, but that's not the be-all and end-all. I want to have fun in my sport, and I want to take it as far as I can. Obviously, I do have big goals like that. But they don't take over who I am as a person and my family and everything else that's important in my life.

I couldn't fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.

I'm a professional athlete. I've been paid since I was in my early 20s to go out there and fight with guys who were 40 or 50 pounds heavier than I am and fight for my life. I got into a business where people make decisions based on some of the most stupid things.

I played a million different sports when I was growing up. I started when I was probably five or six, and we'd just go from activity to activity to activity. I think, finally, my parents just realized that we were missing something in our lives. They realized that it was time for us as a family to start going to church.