“It’s amazing how it feels when you look deep within yourself and do some real and honest soul-searching,” says Simon Hackney softly. This comment comes towards the end of a remarkable interview in which the former Carlisle United winger has spoken with both courage and a disarming frankness.
For most of his life, the full extent of Hackney’s story has been concealed. Only recently has he felt ready to be open.
He took a first step during the first Covid-19 lockdown. At home, in March 2020, Hackney sat down and wrote a poem. He filmed himself reading it and then uploaded the four-minute video to social media.
It was a verse that covered the many stages of his life. The exciting days when he tore down the left wing at Brunton Park were included, but so was a great deal else.
In rhyme, Hackney spoke about the personal hurt he had suffered, and that which he had caused. He described the mental health issues that had affected him since childhood and which he has fought to overcome.
He spoke of family, success, shame, insecurity, happiness, sadness, and learning to be better. “It’s time to start loving myself, instead of hearing the devil’s voices,” one of the lines said.
There was, he now adds, a further reason why he put pen to paper.
“I remember an article in the News & Star when I was at Carlisle," he says. "John Ward [the manager] said about me, ‘He’s the type of guy you’d want your daughter to bring home’.
"I didn’t like that, because when things like that are said, people are always going to be waiting for that moment when you get knocked off that pedestal.
“There was this perspective of me being this perfect being, this nice guy who was always polite. Well, there is another side to Simon. I wanted people to know that as well.”
There are, it turns out, many different sides to the gentle-natured player Blues fans remember for his endearing performances in a blue shirt between 2004 and 2009. He wishes to be candid about them all and is entirely at ease with this decision.
Given some of the subject matter, this is remarkable in itself.
“I just feel I’m not living a lie any more,” he says. “I truly believe it’s the right time to speak about all of this.”
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A week before the interview, we had chatted informally about the topics we might cover. Tentatively, I had asked Hackney about a particular line in his poem that described a man "with a red pimpled-nosed face that I want so badly to erase."
He confirmed that this referred to his being sexually abused as a child.
Hackney said he was willing to talk about this, yet when I broach the subject a week on, he can hear me stumbling apprehensively towards it.
“I can hear you’re trying to find the words,” he says with gentle amusement. “It’s okay. I understand it’s difficult. If you’ve never experienced it, you don’t know how to ask that question of someone. But if you have, it becomes natural.”
And then, calmly, clearly and with flickers of emotion, he explains what happened.
“I was brought up by a poor family, in a flat, and my mum and dad absolutely loved me," he says. "They tried to give me everything they could afford. That wasn’t my downfall in my youth – it was a family member who took advantage of a seven-year-old kid in a way you couldn’t imagine.”
Hackney pauses, and then continues.
“I don’t want to name names, but this person was trusted by my parents,” he says. “He would pick me up from school, cook for me and look after me while my mum and dad were working.
“I was then put in situations where you think, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. Is this right? Is it wrong?’”
Hackney says he was abused for about a year. “I genuinely remember the guy’s face, which is horrific to think about. And as time went on I just started to think, ‘No...this doesn’t feel right’.
“One day, I just had a feeling that I had to tell my mum that this person had been touching me. The first person that always loved me and had my back was my mum. So, although it was quite tough, it was still easy, in a way, to tell her.
"I remember her going absolutely mental. And I never saw this person again in my life.”
It was, it seems, as sudden an ending as that. Hackney, as a child, had little notion of what happened next. The way he describes it, his abuser disappeared from his world as surely as he had been in it.
His parents, he adds, also opted to move on from this dark period by showing love, care and kindness rather than by raising the direct topic of his abuse. His dad – not his biological father, but the man who, from an early age, he regarded as his true dad – adopted this approach along with his mum.
Life went on, with all its new joys and challenges. It was not until many years later that the memory openly resurfaced.
"It was in a conversation with my mum," he says. "I was a lot older and wiser, and she felt it was time that I knew."
His abuser, Hackney was told, was now dead.
Did this sudden knowledge deny him a sense of justice or retribution? He insists not.
“The single craving I always had was never seeing this person again,” he says. “The only time I did see him again was on photos at my dad’s funeral not too long ago. That brought back loads. But I never want, or wanted, anything done to anybody in a bad way.
“That might be a hard thing for people to understand. ‘Why wouldn’t you want them to go through the pain you did?’ But I’m not built that way.”
Hackney cannot be certain that his disturbing boyhood experience is at the root of the emotional challenges he later faced. But he is sure that, in some ways, it shaped him.
“I can’t look back and say it stopped me having a childhood,” he says. “But I do think it’s why I grew into a person that always wanted to treat people so that they would feel good about themselves, rather than be pressured into doing something, or not feeling loved and cared for.
“I also know that a lot of things have played on my mental health over the years. If I'm honest, it did start from that very young age.”
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At that very young age, the brighter side of Hackney's life brought opportunities to a nimble-footed youngster with a mop of curls. His first passion was dancing. “I did tap, jazz, ballet," he says. "Then one day someone saw me kicking a football with my mates and said I should join the school team.
“I played one game, and that was me. The dancing got put to one side and my ballet and tap shoes were gone.”
Hackney, who grew up in the Lancashire Hill area of Stockport before moving to Reddish, was an under-nine player with Reddish Boys Club. “We were underdogs, but had players who would graft for each other,” he says. "I was just a nice boy who fitted in well. They called me ‘greedy’, which I probably was, but I had this ability to dribble and score goals from anywhere.”
The young Hackney remembers two coaches at Reddish, Chris Flood and Philip Dolan, as positive mentors. “I remember saying to my mum, ‘If I score a hat-trick, can I have a curry?’,” he adds. “I near enough did it every week!
“I just loved being around the lads, happy and carefree. There was no jealousy - we were all mates, and when I was told there were scouts from Manchester City coming, it never fazed me.”
Hackney’s trial at Maine Road was successful at 11, but he believes his diminutive size went against him when he was later released. He was then picked up by Liverpool, who invited him onto their academy books in his early teens.
“I went to a trial game against Man United, wearing blue Diadora boots," he warmly recalls. "Steve Heighway was there as the academy director and I remember him saying, ‘You’ve got it, son'. What a thing to hear that was. They signed me up that day.”
It was a time when the slightly older Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher were regulars on the training ground, while he played alongside others with a future in the game, such as John Welsh: a strong teenage midfielder who did not, to Hackney's surprise, enjoy Anfield stardom but whose lower-league career went on to include a loan spell at Carlisle.
Their brief reunion in 2008 reminded Hackney of a time at a giant club which produced a blend of feelings.
“The academy put me in digs, mum drove me to training twice or three times a week, and honestly, I loved it,” he says. “The only thing I struggled with was that my personality wasn’t really built for it.
“Kids at Liverpool had these egos and that swagger of being around the professional game since they were eight or nine. I was just coming from being watched by one man and his dog and enjoying it for what it was.”
Hackney’s progress at Liverpool was eventually dashed by an articular defect to one of his knees which involved damage the size of a 50p piece. It left him on crutches for months, including the time when Liverpool were informing their young hopefuls whether they would be taken on as Under-18 scholars.
He suffered the disappointment of being released, but as his knee recovered, a new path materialised. When he enrolled at South Trafford College in order to take a coaching course, his tutor was the former Manchester City, Birmingham City and Stoke City midfielder Nigel Gleghorn.
“He managed our college team, and he saw something in me,” Hackney says. Gleghorn invited him to train with Nantwich Town, the non-league club he managed, feeling ‘men’s football’ could be the making of the slight Hackney.
The winger did well, and eventually attracted an offer from the Stockport-based club Woodley Sports.
“Going to Woodley left a little bit of a bitter taste, because he [Gleghorn] felt he’d put his arm around me and given me the opportunity,” Hackney says. “I always thank him for that. At the same time, I was still a kid and still wanted to be nearer home.”
Over two years with Woodley, Hackney starred. He showed dynamic talent on the pitch, while his polite personality was understood and respected even at that gritty level.
"You would have people in your changing rooms who were DJs, teachers, you name it," he says. "The manager put me in the spotlight, but I also needed that discipline and structure of being around fully-grown men: being physical, getting knocked off the ball, being sworn at, being told I needed to track back and tackle.
“The older players, though, also put their arm around me. They knew I wasn’t the type of person you could just shout at to get the best out of me.
“It all helped me grow up so much as a footballer."
Hackney credits that nurturing environment with what happened next: the piqued interest of the Carlisle United manager, Paul Simpson.
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He speaks fondly about the day he earned a professional contract with the Blues. In a trial game in 2004, Hackney remembers dinking the ball over a Carlisle player's head and crisply volleying it up the pitch.
“At that moment, I felt, 'If he [Simpson] has seen that, he’s definitely gonna take me'. Even I was surprised at my ability. I was never an outspoken character – I just think everything came out when I was on that stage, on that pitch.”
Simpson was indeed impressed, and Hackney returned to Carlisle, accompanied by his mum and Woodley Sports manager Tony Hancock, to sign his contract. Simpson then gradually introduced the 20-year-old winger into his squad in the Conference.
“I came on for my first game and was shocking," he says. "The kit seemed massive on me and it wasn’t the greatest of starts.
“But watching the team in the play-offs, and walking on the pitch after winning the final at Stoke – that showed me what I needed to work up to.
“It was nice of Paul Simpson to want me around the team. He must have seen something in that nine-stone-two kid.”
Hackney was closer to involvement at the start of the 2005/6 League Two season but still had to convince himself he was ready. A bright performance in a League Cup game at Burnley was well received by some of the travelling United fans.
The winger's limited self-confidence meant he presumed they were mocking his display. ‘I THOUGHT CHEERS WERE JEERS, ran the headline in a News & Star interview that week.
He was lifted when he realised the truth of it – while his innate modesty, coupled with a strong and openly-expressed faith in God, meant Hackney required the help of some older team-mates in order to cope with a world which is often scathing when difference comes along.
“The dressing room environment…it was really hard at first,” he says.
"Peter Murphy won’t mind me saying this, but when I first joined I felt he was really in your face, making jokes. I wondered if he was bullying me, wondered if that look he gave meant he didn’t feel like I belonged.
“But it was just a case of strong personalities, and I wasn't used to it.
“It’s funny how relationships work out. The more I trained and played, and earned the respect of the players, me and Peter Murphy came to be good friends. We ended up playing golf together – and I ended up taking so much from him; the way he was always first in to training and last out, the great professionalism he always showed. He made me want to be better.
“Then there was [captain] Kev Gray, who picked me up every morning and took me to training. We were total opposites – he was this big, strong, masculine man, and I was probably like a fairy to him – but he respected and liked me.”
Hackney, who shared digs with other players, also felt supported by, and grew close to, pros such as Chris Billy, Chris Lumsdon, Keiren Westwood and Karl Hawley, and it is because of this genuine admiration for many of his peers that does not want to dwell long on a less nourishing part of his early time at Carlisle.
His belief in openness, though, does lead him to touch on it.
“Maybe certain people in the club didn’t like who I was," he says. "Maybe it was a case of ‘He’s just a nice guy, let’s pick on him, try and bring him down’.
“When it came to pre-match meals, these people would say certain things – ‘How come you’re not sitting on our table? Is it because we’re white?’"
Hackney, who is mixed race, does not want to identify those individuals. “There were comments about my faith in the Lord as well," he adds.
How did he respond? “I didn't want to show people I was offended,” he replies. “You’d want to crack on and think of it as banter – but deep down, it was hurtful.
"It was a time when people could get away with it more, I suppose. I don't think you'd hear those conversations now. In the beginning I wasn't strong enough to deal with it, but as I grew, I was able to stick up for myself. I also think most of my work on the pitch shut those people up.
"They know who they are. They’re not big in my life now. Luckily I had many good people around the changing room as well.”
Hackney also had the backing of United’s fans who, when they watched his increasingly vibrant performances, sang his name. He had the gifts of quick feet and exciting pace, and his displays persuaded Simpson to upgrade him from impact substitute to trusted starter.
His long wait for a first-team goal ended with two similar attempts in a 5-0 thrashing of Rushden & Diamonds. Brunton Park erupted for the likeable winger who appeared to be dashing towards a glowing future.
“That day [against Rushden], I ran to the crowd where my family were, with my fists to the sky," he says. "And when people sang my name…that was the turning point of me believing, ‘You know what - I’m liked here, and there’s more to come'.
“Paul Simpson gave me the opportunity. I have so much to thank him for. He was such a big person in my career and my life.”
In the course of the interview, and our many conversations since, Hackney has stressed one point above all others. It is how he feels about Carlisle United’s supporters, the way they embraced him at this formative time of his football journey.
He requests that these comments are included in full and emphasised as much as possible. He wants it known that the people of Carlisle had an enormously positive and lasting impact on his life.
“That rapport with the fans...it’s what I always wanted as a professional footballer,” he says.
“Those times before games, signing autographs, meeting supporters – it was a really big thing for me to connect with people.
“Leaving the ground after games with my family was extra special too, because there were times when someone would shout my name and my dad would turn around, saying, ‘Hey, there’s someone shouting ‘Hackney...'
“He was so proud, and my family knew I was happy."
United won League Two in 2005/6, with Hackney a fundamental part of what, to date, remains their last promotion side. It was a heady experience, featuring many glorious victories and also a sincere connection between the team and the people who paid to watch them.
“It’s something I don’t ever want to forget,” he adds. “That was such a special time; the best time of my life in football.
"I genuinely owe most of my good times and good feelings to the fans. They gave me the energy and belief to be that exciting player that could change a game.
“I had good managers and good team-mates, but there’s still that empty stadium that has to be filled to help you go on. I also found it really rewarding going into schools, meeting kids and sharing these experiences with young supporters.
“Seeing their faces at the ground, knowing they looked up to you, feeling you were a big part of people’s lives, sharing those feelings that so many people have about the game – that, to me, was such a big part of being a professional footballer, of living that dream.
“It’s one of the things I look back on that gives me the most happiness from all my time in the sport. It's what I had at Carlisle. It was amazing."
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Hackney rose with the Blues: to an injury-hit League One season under Neil McDonald – a manager the winger still felt “got a lot out of me” – then to 2007/8 under John Ward, during which Hackney rifled a brilliant goal past Leeds in a 3-1 win before a packed, pulsating Brunton Park.
When the ball tore into the net, the noise was deafening; when he was smothered by players, all went silent. “That,” he says, “was like nothing else I ever experienced in football.”
The Blues marched to the top of the third tier, only to falter at the end and lose to Leeds in the play-offs. It was a sad ending to another thrilling period, yet Hackney, at 24, was now a consistent part of good Carlisle times.
It is, then, still hard for him to consider that this was his peak, and that very different times came next.
The 2008/9 season became a surprisingly troubled one as United, having sold goalkeeper Westwood and striker Joe Garner, suffered a dreadful decline in form. Hackney felt there had, for some time, been an uneasy alliance between manager Ward and his assistant Greg Abbott, who were two very different personalities.
"Something wasn’t right and it was rubbing off on the team," he says.
Ward, late in his tenure, also recruited Sunderland’s Graham Kavanagh, who became player-coach. Hackney says Ward talked him up to the Irish international midfielder, but says the combination of Ward, Abbott and Kavanagh on the training ground did not initially bring the harmony he and the Blues needed.
“All three wanted it to work,” he stresses. It was not, though, a smooth fit. Ward was sacked in the autumn, with Abbott appointed in his stead. Hackney's performances, along with those of the team, had declined from a decent enough start.
Abbott, who had been an ebullient No2, was now “gaffer” rather than “Greg” – and Hackney soon began to sense he was not part of the new boss’s plans.
“At this time I was maybe in a bad place in my personal life as well," he says. "Things get on top of you at certain times, and one thing I never felt was that arm around me to say, ‘You’ve still got the ability, you’ve not lost your talent…let’s bring you on here’.
“The fans still believed in me, but I didn’t feel particularly wanted. It was just a strong sense I had. And it’s quite hard to be in an industry where you feel you don’t fit any more.”
Hackney stresses he has no “bitter feelings” towards either Abbott or Kavanagh. Indeed, he says he found the latter “a lovely person” when they first met. “Graham spent a lot of time with me, always spoke about his family, and was someone I looked up to. As a man I really liked him.”
Hackney also concedes the Irishman’s sometimes abrasive way of addressing players on the pitch was simply his own style, and perhaps motivated by a desire to provoke reactions; something which may have worked with others.
“I guess people have different personas in different parts of football. It might have had a positive effect on some players. But I wasn’t the type of person to get the best from that sort of thing,” Hackney says.
“I remember once we were both having a bad game – me more than him – and he turned to Greg and John Ward, pointing at me, and said, ‘Get him off’ – although it wasn’t worded as politely as that.
“That day I was broken. I approached him at half-time and said, 'You can’t talk to people like that.'
“He might have meant nothing by it. But it did affect me. He sent me a lovely, long message early the next morning, and he did apologise to my face the next day, but I was just shocked that somebody I looked up to could talk to people like that. I couldn’t pick anything positive out of what was said.”
Hackney was, overall, in a much lower, colder place. That January, he came off the bench against MK Dons at home and played well in a 3-2 comeback win.
“It felt like the old me. I thought I was ready to kick on again.” He was then surprised to be left out of the matchday squad for United's following game.
Abbott went on to explain that Paul Lambert at Colchester United had made an offer for Hackney, and the player had 48 hours to make a decision.
“The way he said it made me feel like he didn’t want me to say no to this offer," he says. "Maybe he thought it was good for the club, good money. I understand that. It's a ruthless industry, and Greg was a good person operating within that. But I just sensed I wasn’t his cup of tea.”
Hackney insists that he could have risen again at Carlisle, but accepted it was best to move if that belief was not shared – even though certain people tried to advise him against going to Colchester. Kavanagh, he says, was one, warning Hackney he risked “getting lost down there” in Essex.
Another man tried with all his heart to persuade him to stay.
“Derek Lacey!” he exclaims, thinking of the legendary BBC Radio Cumbria commentator. “He called me and said, ‘Simon, please don’t leave. You’re a big part of this club and people love you’.
“There was a big piece in the paper after I’d gone, too, with people’s letters and texts. I realised there had been a bit of an outcry about me being sold. But when I spoke about it to the radio, I never mentioned anything bad about what had happened. I just said we’d come to an agreement of me wanting to move on.
"I was being diplomatic. I didn’t want no confrontation. The truth was different: I just don’t feel I was supported as well as I should have been.
“That’s my truth, and if anyone from that time was to call me now, I would be honest in what I would say."
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It was Hackney's first experience of football showing its more brutal nature and he found it hard to offload the feeling of rejection. He started well under Lambert at Colchester, but when the manager left for Norwich, successor Aidy Boothroyd preferred a more physical, tactical approach which did not naturally accommodate the jinking Hackney.
He was placed in the reserves, before a good loan spell at Morecambe appeared to improve his chances of a long-term future under Boothroyd – until that manager also left the following summer.
“And that’s where it went downhill for me again," he says, "because a new manager came in, and you know who that was? John Ward.
“You can imagine the feeling – ‘Wow, I’ve got my old manager back’ – but when I came back from my summer holiday it wasn’t the same as it had been at Carlisle. I felt as though he’d given up on trying to work with me. Before I knew it, my confidence had gone again.”
The spell had been broken, and Hackney simply could not revive what he had felt so memorably at Carlisle. His career spiralled, via a loan spell at Oxford then a wretched, injury-hit time at Rochdale under Steve Eyre.
He found Spotland’s next boss, John Coleman, more accommodating, but a paltry contract offer saw him slip into non-league with Hereford and Stockport.
The game had, in this period, snatched back all the glories it had seemed to be offering when he was dashing down United's left wing. Two further slow and frustrating years passed.
“At that point I was just doing it because I could do it, not because I wanted to,” he says. “It’s the time where I lost my love of the game. I felt like I didn’t belong any more in the industry.
“In the end, I wasn’t strong enough to say, ‘You know what, I’ll roll my sleeves up and crack on’. At that time I just wanted to do something different.”
Hackney says these times were hard on his mental health - and he opted to leave senior football at 29.
He says he felt "lonely" inside. Though he did go on to find another path, life became complex.
He took a personal training course and worked successfully from the premises where his long-term girlfriend had a beauty salon, but Hackney’s personal circumstances changed when the couple separated.
The reasons are not for this article but he says that, at one point during his post-football identity crisis, he went down a “dark hole”, leading to separation from the person who, he says, had always shown him love and support in both good and challenging times, and whose family had long treated him as one of their own.
Hackney says this left him with a lingering sense of “shame” as he considered the effect of his behaviour on the people close to him and a community that had always embraced him.
It also proved to be the point when he found the resolve to address his decline.
“The lightbulb moment was the shame,” he says. “That feeling of ‘This isn’t the person I want to be’.”
Expressing this part of his story is difficult but Hackney is determined to be honest about it. “I was part of the problem in the relationship and I’m taking accountability of that,” he says.
He began to see things more clearly again. New goals gradually formed. He decided to launch his own fitness business in central Stockport.
As the years passed, and Hackney moved through his thirties, he found that he enjoyed working with people for whom the gym might not normally be an easy place to go. In the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 he began producing YouTube sessions for clients, and later held music-themed Zoom fitness classes tailored towards families.
This new vocation suited his personality, and the idea of doing something more invigorated him. It also brought a clearer realisation home: in order to commit fully to his new future, he had to live cleanly and function honestly, and break with aspects of his past.
Hence, after some profound and painful reflecting, the poem.
“I wanted people to understand I was willing to admit to my flaws and positive sides," he says. "I wanted to come out and say 'I’m not perfect, but I want to do right by my family and the friends who've stuck by me'.
"The line of work I'm going down is all about gaining the trust of people, and the way to do that is to look at yourself first, and be more grown-up and more caring.
“Make right decisions, treat people better. No lies, no double life, no temptation."
Hackney is now with a new partner, Kung, and the learning and reflecting continues. “I’ve got more poems I would like to finish," he says. "I wrote a new one a while ago called 'Shame'. It’s part of my mental health programme and I hope people can relate.
“There are lots of people out there who are struggling, and who don’t speak up about their problems. I won't say that I've had the darkest thought you can think in life, but there have certainly been times when I’ve thought, ‘Do I deserve to be here? Do I?’
"When you look deep within yourself, you can only ask two things – am I evil or am I good? And I can honestly say I’m a better person than I am a bad person.”
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Hackney’s period of what might commonly be described as soul-searching has taken him down further avenues. Another insecurity in his playing days, he says, arose from the fact he started losing hair at an early age.
“When you're in an industry like football, and your character isn’t as strong as anyone else’s...I suppose you lean on that part of your life where you still want to appear youthful, dress well, look good,” he says.
“Call it vanity if you want, but it was very personal to me. I started to cover it up with powder to make it look thicker. There would be times when, out of sheer embarrassment, I wouldn’t go up for headers during matches because I wouldn’t want the powder dropping out.”
Hackney tried a hair transplant to no avail, and at his lowest would cry at how unhappy his appearance made him feel. More recently, he had a tattoo applied to his head and this, he says, has “changed my life completely – now I wake up thinking, 'I don’t have to worry about going outdoors any more'.”
It has taken a number of things like this for Hackney to face the future with a brighter mind. His religious faith, he says, is more proactive than before, and drives him to want to make a difference rather than simply lean on it for forgiveness.
Professionally, he also continues to grow.
A few months ago Hackney spoke excitedly about his ambition to open a wellbeing centre. A current glance at his Facebook page confirms this is very much under way.
“My aim,” says Hackney, “was to have something that helps every genre of people, from kids all the way up to older-age people, with things like pregnancy, mental health, bullying, obesity, even just feeling alone, and that it would be grounded in my own experiences.”
The creation of the Life Hub has seen Hackney move to new premises in Stockport. “It’s fitness and health built around counselling, making sure people feel better about themselves,” he adds. “I’ve been overwhelmed with the response I’ve had.
“What I really love is the fact I’m getting those people who wouldn’t step out of the door, or wouldn’t feel comfortable in a class of people, to come in and enjoy themselves, and talk to me. It works both ways – me helping them, and them helping me to grow as well.
“If they walk out feeling better compared with when they came in, that’s fantastic for me.”
Hackney says he is "excited" to share this, having opened up on so much else.
“It’s taken me a long time to look at myself and think there’s more out there you could be doing than kicking a bag of air," he adds.
"Football isn’t everything. People think it's this dream life, but when you’re trapped in it and it's not going well, I would describe it as a sort of happy prison.
“Getting out of that feeling, and also being free and honest with life, makes a massive difference. I definitely believe I’m turning around. If anybody was to ask me now how I feel, I would say I’m living a happier life than for a long, long time.”
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For a long time, Hackney would not have considered revisiting one of the harder times of his football career with one of the people he associated with it. A few weeks ago, though, he picked up the phone to Graham Kavanagh.
“For years, and certainly when I was at Carlisle, I wasn't strong enough to have this sort of conversation with him,” he says. “I wasn’t the person I am now, and we were just different characters. I can appreciate that.
“So it was nice to take the time to assess everything. We had a really good, positive chat, I explained how I felt back then, and there are no hard feelings whatsoever.
"There’s a friendship there, and we’re going to meet up when he comes to Manchester next.
“I believe it was right to have that conversation and smooth things out. When we spoke the other week, it mainly brought back what a nice guy he was.
"I feel much better for having spoken with him all these years on. I really appreciated the opportunity to do that.”
There is one more reason for his newly reconciled state of mind; the biggest of all. Last October saw the arrival of Hackney's first child, Theo Lavelle.
“I’ve always wanted to be a dad, but I’m so glad that I’m in the right place, and living my life the way I want to live it, when it’s happening,” he says.
“Kung has got her own boy, and I’m stepdad, which has made me grow up a lot. And having my own boy now is absolutely amazing.
“There’s no love in the world like it. I finish work and the only thing I think of is wanting to get home to our son.”
It is impossible, when considering his fatherhood, for Hackney not to draw a line back to his own complex youth. These are beautiful new beginnings after all that has formed his past.
“I’m looking forward to stopping the cycle of what I’ve been through in my own childhood," he says. “There’s so much to look forward to.”
After all this reflection, Hackney at 38 feels more settled than at any time before. “I’m looking on life with a whole different perspective,” he finally says. “I’m piecing it together, bit by bit, where I feel very content.”
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