Former Republic of Ireland striker Noel Hunt has revealed how overhearing two coaches at Reading make a £10 bet over whether or not he would make the grade in the Championship, was one of the biggest driving forces of his career.
Hunt was speaking in a wide-ranging interview on the Soccer Republic Extra podcast, where among other things he revealed how he had a trial to be a goalkeeper at Crystal Palace and how his failure to make the grade as a shot-stopper led to him becoming a striker.
The 35-year-old attacker is now a player/assistant manager at his home town club of Waterford but it was Shamrock Rovers who gave him his break as an attacker the Hunt is still fondly remembered as a something of a cult hero there.
Moves to the SPL with Dunfermline and Dundee United then followed before the most successful period of his career when he moved to Reading in 2008 for a fee believed to be in the region of £600,000.
Hunt spent five seasons at Reading, helping them gain promotion to the Premier League and turning down a move to Celtic during that time, before joing Leeds in 2013.
However, while he enjoyed a hugely successful career and was capped three times for his country, Hunt admits that in many ways becoming a professional soccer player was a career he fell into.
"I didn’t set out to be a footballer, I didn’t know what I wanted to be but it wasn’t a footballer," he said. "I always said that if I got ten quid more to play football than to work I would have done it.
"My career is different to a lot of the boys. My career was a stepping stone – ‘is he good enough for this level? We don’t know’. That’s what probably drove me on, to prove people wrong.
"League of Ireland people didn’t think I was good enough back in the day and I proved I was good enough to be involved in the League of Ireland. Then in the SPL, people didn’t think I was good enough, so everywhere I’ve been I’ve kind of had doubters at the start.
"That just drove me on to prove them wrong. One of the coaches, I won’t say his name, at Reading, I overheard him have a bet with another member of staff that I wouldn’t score ten goals for Reading.
"I overheard that and no-one knew about it, but I knew about it. I’ve never said it before to be fair but in my first season I think I played 30-odd games and got 14 goals. When I hit the 10th one, I had a little fist pump to myself.
"It was probably a tongue-in-check thing with himself but it just gave me a little extra fire just to prove him wrong."
Hunt grew up in a traditionally GAA area in Waterford and both he and his brother Stephen played hurling as underage players before making the switch to soccer.
Noel is two years younger than Stephen and revealed it was his older sibbling’s passion for soccer that eventually led to both of them represting their country on the international stage.
"Where we grew up, we’re in the middle of the sticks, on the foot of the Comeragh mountains," he said. "All we had was a GAA field, it was hurling, there wasn’t even football, we had to go to the next village to play Gaelic football so it was hurling all the way.
"Even with that we lived a couple of miles from the village and Stephen used to go down and meet all his friends and he was adamant about being a soccer player, he never wanted anything else. It’s lucky he did get to be a footballer because I don’t know what he would have do if he didn’t!"
Stephen was already a trainee at Crystal Palace and on his way to becoming a professional footballer when Noel got his first big break – a trial for the Eagles as a goalkeeper.
Hunt was eventually told that he was too small to make the grade in goal for Palace and when he looks back on old pictures of himself now, he admits that the club may have had a point.
"I’ve got a good spring," he joked when asked about it. "I was still small at 25! When I look back on pictures every shirt is massive on me, even the first international shirt I wore at 22 is probably down around my knees."
"I’m not the smallest but I wasn’t the biggest and I loved being in goal. I used to spring around and I had good reflexes. I was handy enough but I wasn’t going to pull up any trees.
"I played a little bit outfield but nothing major and I used to fill in for some of the boys that wouldn’t turn up on a Saturday morning, like an emergency sub, that was me. Other than that I didn’t really play outfield.
"I scored my first goal at Under-13, I was put on the left wing and the ball came across the six-yard box and swung as hard as I could at the ball. It went in but it didn’t hit the net so that’s how weak my shot was. I don’t know what the goalkeeper was doing but honestly it nearly came back to me it was that bad."
Hunt admitted that his failure to make the grade at Palace as a goalkeeper was what spurred him on to play up front and make the switch to becoming a striker and he revealed that 12 years later, he gained a measure of revenge for that snub.
"After they told me that I was too small, to be fair they try to break it to you gently, but the killer thing after that was that I had to got in the back of Clinton Morrison’s convertible to watch Stephen and Clinton in the first team photo for the up and coming season.
"I was sat there watching them taking it and I thought ‘this is not nice’. It kind of sank in then but I think it was 12 years or near enough to the month that I ended up scoring the winner at Crystal Palace to put us second in the league in the automatic position and I was just laughing to myself.
"People probably didn’t know what I was laughing to myself but I was just looking about roughly to where I was sitting 12 years ago and thinking ‘wow, what a difference'."
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