Sunderland: Striker Aaron Connolly opens up about alcohol addiction

Connolly was a very talented teenager who came from Ireland when he was 15 to move to Brighton and Hove Albion.

A prolific goalscorer for his under-23 side, it wasn’t long before he made his first Premier League start, aged just 19 in October 2019.

He scored two that day as the Seagulls beat Tottenham Hotspur 3-0, but rather than being the first step towards a successful career at the top level, he believes it was quite the opposite.

“That’s probably where my career started going down when I really should have kept going up,” he said.

“I just stopped doing the things that got me to this position. I just stopped working hard and you can’t do that.

“I started to believe the hype. I became a tough person to be around. No one could tell me anything.”

He managed just three more goals in the top flight as his promising youth career failed to materialise.

There were loan spells with Middlesbrough in the Championship and then Venezia in Italy’s Serie B, but this was cut short by a move to Hull, initially on loan before signing a one-year deal.

“The loans were a sign of what he was doing because he should have been playing week in and week out at Brighton,” he said.

“From where I was to where I ended up, something clearly went wrong.”