'IT HASN'T BEEN MY WHOLE FOCUS AND THAT HELPED ME

SHAUN Barker never attempted to conceal the fact that he had no burning desire to play football.

- Chris Dunlavy

"I remember when I got offered my first pro contact at Rotherham," recalls the 42-year-old, who even as a teenager sported the long hair and "naughty" clothes that betrayed his real passion for music and the arts.

"I was actually disappointed in a strange sort of way.

I'd been planning to study. I was looking forward to travelling around Europe. Football was the last thing on my mind.

"Ronnie Moore pulled me and said 'Listen, son, do you want to be a footballer or a rock star?'. I said 'What a ridiculous question if I could sing or play guitar I wouldn't be anywhere near a football pitch!"."

It was a risky gambit, but one that consistently paid off for the central defender, who made 361 EFL appearances over the course of a 15-year playing career and became a terrace hero at Rotherham, Blackpool and Derby "I think all my managers respected that I was quite open and honest, and that I said up front that this was never what I really wanted to do," he explains.

"I turned up at Blackpool and was wearing some naughty gear, probably looking like a punk or something, and straight away I could see that Simon Grayson liked that side of me.

"Same with Nigel Clough at Derby. He signed me knowing full well that I was probably the least stereotypical footballer that you could ever imagine.

"I know it can be hard for some people to get their head round. I'm often asked how I survived in such a cut-throat business without that desire to be a footballer.

"But my perspective has always that been if I'm being paid to do a job then I'm going to give it my best.

"I used to work as a pot washer for my dad's company in the summer holidays when I was 15 or 16, and it was the I same there. If I was going to retire and work in Tesco or go and be a bin man or work as an architect, I'd apply myself in : exactly the same way.