Not taking the Mikey

QUIETLY reading a book over a cuppa in an anonymous city coffee shop or strolling through Edinburgh streets, Michael Stew art is content. He returned north so he could enjoy such simple pleasures. So he could again retreat into real life as "Mikey Stewart - an ordinary guy", rather than labour on with the 24-hour role of "Michael Stewart - footballer". That was two years ago.

He considers the cosmopolitan qualities of the capital city camouflage, and the fact he has jumped the divide between Hearts and Hibs and is still allowed to get on with his life out of the spotlight is testament to that.

At first glance the move from boyhood heroes Hearts to their greatest rivals Hibs did not seem the most sensible move for a guy hoping to blend into the background away from the football. Yet Stewart is a pretty clever and articulate guy. He knew the difference between Edinburgh and other cities. Football matters to large swathes of the city's populations but it's not all-consuming. It's easy to disappear, if that's the desire.

"Nobody really bothers you in Edinburgh. You just need to be smart about where you go and what you do. On the whole, people are happy to let you get on with living your own life. It helps that I know the city so well - it's where I grew up, it's where my friends from school days and my family are, it is where I feel comfortable.

"There are so many things that can impact on a player's game. Life has to be balanced and happy so when I made the conscious decision to try to keep my work and the rest of my life separate, it was the logical decision to come back up the road. I already had a life away from football here. If I had moved anywhere else I would have had to start from scratch. I wouldn't have known anyone other that the people at the club I joined and that's when it gets difficult to leave the club and the football life behind at the end of the day. You can't clock off because the only people you know are your team-mates." But he also returned north to kick-start his career.

A Manchester United starlet, he broke through to the first team squad, just rarely to the starting XI. Fed-up with life on the fringes and aware that time was ticking by he went on loan, first to Royal Antwerp, then to Nottingham Forest and, finally, Hearts. "Remember, a footballer's career is pretty short. In other jobs, where people maybe work for 40 years, two years spent disinterested in the job isn't that long, it's a fraction of the overall career but it's a large chunk of a footballer's career. It's not just about money. If you want to be the best player you can then you can't afford to hang around on the fringes too long."

A training-ground altercation with David Johnson, a Forest teammate, left Stewart with a cut eye and another spell on the sidelines. A player who, by then, had been caricatured as a lad with an ego and an attitude problem, fingers were pointed at Stewart. By the time it emerged he had not been the instigator, but the victim, the damage had been done. There was a career and a reputation to rebuild.

Whether Stewart had ideas above his station as a youngster is for others to judge. Now he certainly seems a grounded fella. Maybe lessons have been learned, maybe the stories were exaggerated in the first place.

"You just get on with it and hope that people make their own judgments. Some people may think I've had lows or that there have been tough times but I don't look at it that way. There are people who have had worse kicks in the teeth than I've had. Look at poor Lee Wilkie, facing possibly a third cruciate operation to save his career. He's young and he's already gone through two. The first must have been hard enough and a lot of people wouldn't have been able to go through it twice, let alone contemplate coming back a third time.

"That's why I was so intent on building a life for myself away from football so that when you do have low points, it's not all-consuming or influencing every aspect of your life. Some of the lows when I had when I was younger were difficult to deal with and did affect all aspects of my life and I made a conscious decision to make the changes needed so that wouldn't happen again."

Quite a statement of clarity and maturity from a 25-year-old guy with an alleged attitude problem.

But, while everything is relative, there have been down points. The move to Hearts last year should have been a dream come true. It wasn't and for the first time Stewart sensed the managerial hang-ups were about his ability rather than his psyche. It was a blow to his self-belief.

Having been singled out so young the challenge was maintaining the equilibrium and confidence. "I don't think it's wrong to build up young players but the expectation levels have to be realistic. It's good to build people's confidence but the flipside is when that is exaggerated and then people can't live up to it and then are instantly dismissed as crap! There's no in between. You have to be a strong character and be surrounded by good people who believe in you."

In Tony Mowbray, he has found that man. A manager who understands that making mistakes and learning from them are part of the football education. On the way to the interview room the jocular debate had been whether it was possible for people in the game to bury former allegiances below current duties and obligations. For most journalists, regardless previous affiliations, impartiality is the master; for the majority of footballers, it's whoever pays the wages - even if it is the rivals of the team they grew up supporting.

"Yes, I struggled with the idea when it first came up and put a lot of thought into it but the thing I was very conscious about was that I needed a manager who was going to believe in me. You get to the stage when you've not been playing that people just assume you are not that good anymore. I needed a platform to prove myself. I'm not over-enamoured with my season but I have done one or two decent things and been okay and I know that other managers may have dropped me at times and then it's another uphill battle. Like any player when you first break into a team, you need a manager who is going to play you through thick and thin and help you get that self-confidence back. In my case, that's what this season has been about. It's given me a strong foundation."

His career stats prior to joining Hibs consisted of 21 league starts. Total. This season he has made 24 and hopes to add a few more once he shakes off the current foot injury.

"There is still a long, long, long , long way to go to get to where I want to get to and become the player I want to become and, sometimes, in my own head, I think that things should have happened quicker. I have to stay objective and not be too hard on myself. But hopefully in the next few years I can build towards being the player I want to be."

He is already better. Mentally and physically. He has matured on and off the park and he is happier with the direction.

Life has changed Stewart but not so much so that he is unrecognisable. "I'm still idealistic in terms of the way I want to see football played and it's very much what the manager is like. I think it's like anything, once you are within the framework of any industry, you see the skeletons that are in the closet, the worms that are crawling amongst the rest of it. It does take the gloss off things. It's the same in any industry but the difference is that the majority of people have an opinion on football and are interested in it whereas the majority of people won't judge a computer engineer on their work and they don't support IBM.

"Maybe I have changed over the years because in the past it was football, football, football with me but not now. I've taken a step back but I've not changed my ideas on where I want to get to or the type of football I like to see played."

He is again looking to the future, it's only others who keep him pegged in the past. Away from the pitch he is happy as Mikey Stewart, on it he is now on his way to being accepted as Michael Stewart of Hibs rather than Michael Stewart, former Manchester United starlet. He laughs at the labels. "To be honest with you, I don't really mind that or dwell on that. You learn to live with that." There are certainly worse clubs to be associated with than the Old Trafford side. He laughs again and nods. "As I said, there are others worse off than me!"

Taken from the Scotsman