The Ex Swindon Town Player Where Are They Now Thread

“I miss the art of kicking a ball, the animal in me of being competitive. I miss the friendship of it, of being around team-mates every day. I don’t particularly miss some of the emotional spikes because you’re constantly fighting that up-and-down feeling of win, lose, in the team, out the team. I don’t really miss that,” Michael Doughty says.

It is early afternoon in late February but the weather is so mild in central London that Doughty has strolled along wearing a shirt. Runners and cyclists are doing their thing as we take a seat on a wooden bench in Hyde Park, among the daffodils and just around the corner from Oxford Street, to talk about the decision that Doughty made last year to walk away from professional football at the age of 27.

The eldest son of Nigel, the former Nottingham Forest owner who died nine years ago, Doughty made the best part of 250 appearances across all four divisions after coming through the academy at Queens Park Rangers. “251, but who’s counting?” says Doughty, correcting me and laughing.

Doughty has always been on top of statistics, just like he understood the strengths and weaknesses of his own game. Humble and candid, there is no bitterness or frustration in Doughty’s voice when he reflects on his career. “In my heart, I knew that I was a good footballer but I didn’t have the physical capability to be an outstanding footballer, if that makes sense. And that is just an honest discussion with yourself,” he says.

Doughty enjoyed his time at Swindon but left to pursue another career (Photo: Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images)

Some at Swindon Town would say that Doughty was better than good. He scored 21 goals and registered 20 assists across 93 league appearances for the club — not bad for a midfielder — and helped them to win promotion to the third tier last season. They even started to call him the “Wiltshire Pirlo”. “I think that was because I grew my hair in the last couple of years and more to do with my inability to move across the pitch than it was with my resemblance to Pirlo footballing-wise,” Doughty says, smiling.

What is without question is that Doughty was much-liked as a person, as well as a player at the club, and that is why the statement that appeared on Swindon’s website six months ago caused such a jolt. “Swindon Town can confirm that midfielder Michael Doughty has left the club with immediate effect for personal reasons.”

Doughty said nothing at the time and has stayed silent about that decision ever since. Inevitably, people were worried about what those “personal reasons” might be. Doughty listens as I read out an extract from a tribute, titled “Thank you, The Swindon Pirlo”, from a supporters trust site. As well as acknowledging the “special memories” he created at the club, including hat-tricks, free kicks and Panenka penalties, the author says Doughty’s “well-being comes before anything else” and “prays he recovers quickly”. Others expressed similar sentiments.

The good news is that Doughty is absolutely fine now. In fact, he always has been. His decision to terminate his contract was based on “personal reasons” but had nothing to do with ill health. Ultimately, Doughty decided that playing professional football, which consumed his life for so long, had run its course and that it was time for something else.

Becoming a parent played a part in that decision — Doughty talks about how he “felt something was different inside me since I was a dad” — and so did the ramifications of the pandemic, including the realisation that football was just not the same without supporters in stadiums. But the most significant factor in all of this was Doughty’s desire to put his heart and soul into starting a business that he had been planning for two years. Hylo, a running shoe that is made from sustainable materials, was launched in August.

Doughty reported back to the County Ground for pre-season around that time and played one game for Swindon, in the EFL Cup against Charlton, at the start of September. A week later, he followed up an open conversation with Lee Power, Swindon’s owner, with a message to say that he had made up his mind to call time on his career.

Players rarely walk away from professional football, especially when they are under contract — all the more so when they are still in their 20s and approaching their peak. Doughty, however, had total conviction that he was doing the right thing. Perhaps the best way to explain what was going through his mind is to listen to the answer that he gives to a question about what he thinks his father might have said if he was still alive.

“He probably would have talked me out of it, to be fair. He loved watching me,” Doughty replies, smiling. “I think genuinely he would have had a differing opinion. But the impact of that experience (his father died suddenly at the age of 54) has made me not want to do anything in halves and also made me feel that time is short.

“Even at 28 — or 27 at the time — it was like, ‘I’ve got something that I love with Hylo, don’t let it go’, and that’s how I felt. I really did. My biggest fear since… when you start playing football at a young age, and you probably experienced it yourself; you are so used to routine and structure and passion, and my biggest fear was at the end of my career, what happens when that rug is pulled?

“I found something which gave me this passion in a different way, gave me this purpose, gave me this structure, like there was an opportunity without a ceiling. And in my career, there was a bit of a ceiling, so I was like, ‘I don’t want to let go of this’. And there was just something inside of me that was like, ‘If I try to run both horses at the same time, one of them is going to have a bad ending. So why do it?’.”

One of the few people that Doughty consulted over the decision was Patrick Bamford, who is godfather to his seven-month-old daughter Luna. The two have been close for more than 20 years, going right back to the days when they would sit together with their dads, who were best friends and fanatical Forest supporters, at the City Ground.

“It was a tough decision and I didn’t feel like I wanted to justify myself to a million different people, but I did speak to Pat because he’s my best and oldest mate, and I think he got it,” Doughty says. “If you’re a sportsperson, you obviously love it and you’re addicted to it, but there is another side to it. It’s quite attritional over time and I didn’t want to get to a place where I was (almost worn down) by the sport. And that sounds a bit silly for anyone looking outside of football because it’s an amazing job. But I feel grateful that I look at it now as that, ‘What an amazing chapter’.”

Could he sense that people were anxious when that statement from Swindon was released? After all, the wording left room for doubt.

“I could, yeah. And my mum was like, ‘What’s the best route here?’. When people say personal reasons, they automatically think something terrible has happened but they were personal (reasons) for me.

“When I decided how I was going to leave, I just wanted it to be, ‘Leave me to it and let the team focus on the season’. If it becomes a story of why or did he have a falling out with somebody, it just detracts from the positivity around the football club. A lot of people said, ‘Well, if you don’t give a reason, there’s going to be a lot of noise’ and actually, it went the opposite way. It was a bit newsworthy for two or three days and then people moved on. I sort of stand by how I did that.”

Mentally, football can be heavy at times. Doughty talks about feeling “like a sense of relief, to a certain degree, in my whole outlook” now that he is watching and enjoying games from the sofa, rather than competing. But what about the adrenaline rush, that sound of the bell going in the dressing room five minutes before kick-off — doesn’t he miss that? “It’s like a primal energy when the bell rings, isn’t it?” Doughty says, his eyes lighting up. “I do miss that.

“I loved the Saturday of playing in front of a crowd and the connection with the fans. I think part of me, subconsciously, had that first game of the season against Charlton, and didn’t have fans, and just thought, ‘This isn’t the same experience for me’.”

Doughty’s wider experience of football is fascinating to explore because he talks about it with such candour. An erudite man away from football — he was educated at Harrow and left with 14 A grades across his GCSEs and A-levels — Doughty was a deep thinker on the pitch, too. Sometimes he probably dwelled on things too much. “On the coach, I used to reflect on every pass,” he says.

Looking back, Doughty also realises that he spent too long trying to get somewhere, rather than stopping to appreciate and enjoy what he had. It was not until he joined Swindon permanently in 2018 that he managed to “find that peace” that enabled him to play with total freedom. “I really feel that super strongly,” Doughty says, as he thinks about his journey through the leagues, which included eight loan spells.

“For so many years, I was so desperate to be in the Premier League. I’d come through at QPR, I played in the Premier League, I got a contract early as a kid as a long-term QPR prospect, and I was always chasing that feeling of… your ambitions as a footballer, whatever level you are at, you are driven to be a competitor and the best.

“I was always hampered by it because if a game didn’t go well, I would ruminate too much. And if it did go well, I would look too far in the future, as if, ‘OK, now I’ll build some momentum and then I’ll get a move’’ I would almost live in this future place, rather than in the moment and just enjoying the day-to-day.

“I almost was like… not too ambitious but I didn’t know how to harness it in a way that was good for me. And then the last two or three years, when I sort of dropped down to Swindon, in my mind, I was here for a project. I wasn’t thinking about me moving on, I wasn’t thinking selfishly. I was just thinking, ‘I really connect to this club; let me take it to the next level’, and I just relaxed, and I was so much happier and playing so much better.”

Although Doughty’s reasons for hanging up his boots come across as absolutely genuine, there will be a perception among some that his background has played a part in his decision, bearing in mind his father was a hugely successful businessman and among the wealthiest people in Britain at the time of his death. “It’s interesting because it’s one that’s followed me around a little bit,” Doughty says, referring to his upbringing.

He pauses for a long time to consider what to say next.

“You don’t define yourself by your own background. You just are (who you are),” he says. “People talk about it because they think they have an insight into your background based on something. I didn’t play professional football for money but I earned a good living out of it, and I’m certainly earning a worse living doing what I’m doing now. But, yeah, I do have more freedoms to make decisions. I think that was probably why I didn’t want to go into the detail of everything (when leaving Swindon).

“I am quite ambitious. When you are around somebody, like a parent who goes and does something quite big with their life — and the definition of big is not just money; it’s impact and everything — you feel that’s your barometer in a weird way. Where you deem success to be is kind of based on that frame of reference.

“And I think for me, I was a successful footballer in the context that I made it through the odds but there’s something else in me that wants to drive a bit more impact. We’re all products of our environments, and that’s probably because of that.

“So I think my answer is, that’s fine, people have their opinions. I’m more chilled with it than I was in the past. I think the people who really knew me at Swindon will know my personality and people that I played with in football, they’ll know that I’m a driven person. It’s a little bit of a curse of my frame of reference in a way because I’m shooting for the stars.”

Hylo has given Doughty a platform to do that and there is no doubting his passion for his business or the environment, which is something that has grown over time and been influenced partly by aspects of his football career.

“When I was playing, I didn’t really think about the brands that I was supporting, or the companies that I was supporting. I was like, ‘Oh my god, Adidas want to give me a pair of boots!’. Every player has felt that when you get a free delivery — you feel like you’ve made it,” Doughty says, laughing.

“As I was maturing in my career, as a person off the pitch, I was thinking a little bit more about my impact, certainly from an environmental point of view, watching David Attenborough and being inspired. And then I started to read more and more about climate change and I was like, ‘Fuck me, we’re in a bit of a pickle here’. Then I started looking at my day-to-day job and I was just chucking on clothing, wearing these boots, and actually, we’re selling something to an audience and we don’t really know it. We’re inadvertently an advocate of it.”

On the back of all of that, Doughty talks about experiencing a “lightbulb” moment where he sensed a chance to design and manufacture an environmentally-friendly running shoe for mainstream sports. “I was like, ‘Hang on a minute, there is an opportunity here to create a brand which sportspeople can connect to’.”

Getting a new business off the ground is not easy at any time but especially in the middle of a global pandemic. On top of that, you might wonder whether he has also faced a challenge to convince people that a trainer that is designed with the environment in mind — in this case, made from corn fibre — will be as good, if not better, than what some of those established brands have been manufacturing for years.

Doughty doesn’t think he will go back to the game.

“It’s not a challenge of perception. It’s also a business challenge,” Doughty says. “We could sit here all day and I could tell you how challenging it is to bring together materials that have less impact in the making of a shoe, because the engineering of a shoe might look incredibly simple but the complexity behind it, not just in technical pure engineering points but also in (terms of the) supply chain, bringing innovative suppliers that are quite nascent because the materials are different and new… there are a lot of business challenges.

“And also, you have some risks because you’re bringing these products to market in a way that’s not really been done. You do your due diligence but you’re kind of banking on your consumer to be on that journey with you.”

Doughty changes gear for a moment and talks about altering mindsets.

“For Hylo as a business, for all of us, we’re in a serious climate emergency,” he adds, his voice hardening. “Unless you deny science, by 2050, there could be 200 million climate refugees — 200 million people cannot live in their homes because the climate is so inhospitable.”

He goes on to tell a story about climate change involving Charley Hull, the British golfer who is one of several leading sportspeople to have aligned themselves with Hylo. Last year, Hull was playing in the Rose Ladies Series Grand Final at Wentworth when soaring temperatures led to a wildfire breaking out, causing the event to be cancelled. “What’s that, 50 miles away from where we are now? We can all feel the environment changing around us,” Doughty says.

“And, for me, sport — and you can obviously tell I’m quite passionate about this — is so emotive and such a force for good. It’s so inspiring, like we grew up watching the iconic moments of the Tiger (Woods) ball dropping into the hole with the Nike tick, and what that sells and that feeling of excellence.

“Suddenly, if Tiger is associated with climate change, guess what? That’s cool. And that’s why Hylo is so powerful in theory because by almost forgetting about sustainability and just focusing on the everyday athlete, the one per cent mindset of improvement, the narrative of sport, it’s very similar to the narrative of climate change — one per cent improvement, one per cent change.”

Bamford is another of the sportspeople on board with Hylo and Doughty gives a brilliant response when it is suggested to him that the Leeds striker’s superb form in the Premier League this season must have been opportune for his business. “I was saying to him as a joke, ‘I was toying with not working with you when you were struggling a little bit for a few goals!’.”

Doughty breaks into laughter on the back of that last comment. He could not be happier for Bamford, who has had to deal with plenty of doubters during his career, and that includes supporters at clubs he has played for, as well as managers. The fact that Bamford was privately educated — and Doughty experienced this in his playing career too — has also somehow found its way into the narrative around how he is judged as a footballer.

“The annoying thing for me, as his mate, was just the fake news around him really, like the JCB stuff,” Doughty says, alluding to the myth that Bamford’s father owns the company that manufactures construction equipment. “He’s been through some tough times. Nobody is impenetrable. Everybody takes criticism and it does have an impact. For him, I’m just so happy because of that.

“Fundamentally, he’s just such a good person and he’s always been like that. Hopefully, it’s like a bit of a lesson that words do carry a lot of meaning but I think, more for him, it’s validation of him as a footballer. He’s incredibly talented and gifted.”

While Bamford is enjoying the best season of his career, Swindon are struggling and embroiled in a relegation scrap in League One. Although Doughty says he does “sometimes feel a bit guilty” when he watches their games, he points to a bigger picture. “I’m not the reason and I’m not the reason if I was playing, that they’d do better. There are a lot of other circumstances, for sure.

“I don’t want you to write another interview about the pandemic but it was so hard for us to keep the squad together with such uncertainty. All the boys who got promoted thought they should get better contracts and, no fault of anyone, but the circumstances meant that clubs were delaying offering contracts, we then lost the bulk of the squad and we lost that momentum. I really think we would have gone up and I could have probably still been there if we kept the squad together.”

Could Doughty be talked back into putting his boots on again? He is still only 28 and football has been such a big part of his life. Has he definitely finished?

Doughty starts laughing. “Definitely, yeah. You can’t be a professional footballer in halves. I’ve gone into a different place, a different mindset now. You can’t lose that tunnel vision of being a footballer. You either have it or you don’t. And I think I’ve lost it to be honest because there’s something else that has come into my life now that I direct that energy towards.”