Retired football ace Anton says he knew nothing but soccer until he retired in 2019, having joined the East London club’s academy at nine. He says: “When you retire from football, or any sport I’d imagine, you lose a bit of your identity and nothing ever prepares you for that. That’s what’s happened to me.
“If there’s anything that I can say about Dancing on Ice, and how good this process has been for me, it’s that I really have this sense of being myself back again.” Anton, 39, said he was lucky to be able to go from retiring as a player straight into a job with his football agency – but nothing compared to the adrenaline of being on the pitch.
“All of a sudden that’s gone and you never get that again,” he says. "All I knew from five or six was to be a footballer. Everything as a footballer is laid out – what to do, what to eat, how to sleep, how to recover. “But when you’ve retired you’ve got to put your own structure in your day, which you’ve never been taught to do, and that is what I found the hardest.” Anton credits wife Lucy Cornell and their three young kids with picking him up when he felt low.
He says: “My wife has said to me before, ‘Get yourself up, get out, even if you’re going to the Costa on the high street.’. “She’d say, ‘The minute you start getting out of the house is the minute you’re going to start feeling better’.” The structure of Dancing on Ice and learning new skills were life- affirming for him.
He says: “Standing in the tunnel, getting ready to go out to perform on the ice and then finishing, it was very exhilarating for me that first week.” Anton, who is 40 next month, reflects: “I don’t feel like I’m turning 40 in my mind but my body was telling me a few things over the last two months of training. I was feeling the wear and tear from playing football in my back and it felt like I was in my 60s!”.
