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| Sam Clucas scored for Hereford at Telford in 2014 in what turned out to be his last game in non-league |
Swansea midfielder Sam Clucas has spoken to the Guardian about his rise from non-league football.
When Clucas signed for Hereford United in 2011 he was widely criticised and very few would've expected him to be playing in the Premier League seven years later.
Here's some of the article, but the full piece can be read here.
Rejected by Leicester City, released by Lincoln City and turned down by MK Dons after scoring a hat-trick in a trial game, Sam Clucas has proved a few people wrong along the way, including one particular supporter. “I used to look on the fans’ forum when I played for Hereford and you would see people saying: ‘He’s the worst player we’ve ever signed.’ There was one – I actually took a screenshot of it on my phone – who wrote: ‘If he ever plays higher than League Two, I’ll eat my hat.’ That’s one that always sticks in my head,” the midfielder says.
Defying the critics has become the story of Clucas’s career in many ways, with last summer’s move to Swansea presenting a familiar set of challenges for a player whose colourful CV includes a stint operating the till in a cafe at Debenhams. Jeered off when he was substituted at the Liberty Stadium against Brighton in November, Clucas was given a standing ovation by the same fans two months later after he scored twice for Swansea in a 3-1 victory over Arsenal.
That road to redemption is a well-trodden path for Clucas, only these days he has mechanisms in place during the bad times, especially when it comes to social media. “I used to be one of those players that types his name and sees what people are saying but it does get you down at times. So I thought to myself that I had to block it out because it was getting to the point where I was losing confidence going into games, thinking I was going to get slated. Now I’ve turned all my Twitter notifications off, so if I have a bad game I don’t see: ‘Clucas was rubbish, get out of my club.’
“Fans are obviously trying to vent their frustration but they don’t realise the knock-on effect it has on the player. And obviously if that player is going to a game not full of confidence, it has a knock-on effect to the team. It’s the most frustrating part of being a footballer because, to be honest, it’s hard to bite your tongue at times. Some of the tweets, I think: ‘I wouldn’t say that to anybody.’ So if you’re going to be on social media, you’ve got to develop a thick skin, because it can be a vicious place.”