I had a great role model for my own journey into fatherhood: my own dad. He was a traditional father I guess, putting food on the table, working hard to provide for the whole family while at the same time looking after the kids.
For me, it was a fantastic childhood, and as many of my friends did not have their own fathers in their everyday lives, he became a sort of surrogate father to them. He loved football and went everywhere with my two older brothers who both played at a decent level; he took me and my younger brother, plus many of the kids on the estate where we lived, to play run-outs (a version of ‘hide-and-seek’ played on a vast scale) in the local parks and marshes. I believe that my father’s example made me sure of the type of father I would want to be to my own children.