Matt Jarvis: Playing for England Changed Everything.

I wonder if sometimes there's a danger that we kind of over-romanticise what performance is, because for you, what you're kind of saying, I think, is that for you, you turned up and you did the work and you were having a great time and that kind of delivered performance.

Is that...

Is that fair?

I would say that to start with, 100%.

Because you've got no fear.

As young kids going into a first team and into a new club, you don't have that fear factor.

It's only... a year down the line two years down the line where now the expectation level has risen

yeah

that's why you look at all of these players that have come up you know they first couple of years they're flying and then there's a little pushback because actually the expectation is so high now that you've performed at that level now the expectation is you have to do that every week and then when you don't do it you don't get that oh he's young he's just got in the team no it's not you know you've been here two years now the expectation is you do that and if you make a mistake then you're going to get punished what's

that like that expectation week in week out of having to perform at that level again how do you how do you deal with that

It's hard because it's like being on a hamster wheel because you get put on the hamster wheel and it spins and you go from Saturday game, Tuesday game, Saturday game, Tuesday game and you're constantly spinning and you don't really get off.

So you're constantly in this thing of played well, played bad, played okay, next game and you're training and you don't really get an opportunity to... to look back and go right oh that was good or oh i didn't do very well you you have a small window after the game if you review the game and then it's like right that's gone on to the next so you're constantly pushing yourself for the next game for the next thing so for me that was how i tried to i you know i would beat myself up after a game if i didn't play very well um and you know i know so many players that are able to just switch it off and go right i'm football's done now it's back to family or

or

whatever and you should forget about it whereas i i found it a little bit harder to

yeah

to get to lose that i held on to it a bit bit too long um but again i think that comes with age and experience and being able to deal with it you know towards the middle towards the middle when i was at wolves towards the one and then the rest of my career you then have sports psychology that comes into play and then you can start understanding a lot more why you do certain things.

And I was very lucky as well.

My wife and her, so her mum's a psychotherapist.

Oh, perfect.

And so my wife is very much my mother's daughter.

And I was able to, I was one that wasn't really, I wouldn't necessarily open up and talk, I suppose, especially younger.

So she was able to eke a lot of that out of me, which definitely helped within sport because, you know, you're very much your closed book.

You just try and focus and get going.

And when it's sort of week in, week out, you're kind of evaluated based on presumably the last game and you're only as good or not.

Only as good as your last game.