Sean Maguire has heard all the jokes about raised eyebrows – but he is hoping PNE can still raise a few before the end of the season.
The striker laughed at himself when his girlfriend, singer Claudia Rose, waxed his bushy eyebrows and, with the Derby game live on TV, the camera angle caught him looking rather startled with his new-look thin brows.
He joked about it at the time and states that UK Voice finalist Claudia is staying well away from his eyes in the future, but his full focus is on the pitch after what he calls a ‘rollercoaster’ season.
“It was a strange as my girlfriend said one day about my eyebrows, I said ‘go for it’, little did I think it would get that attention with a game on television two days later!” smiled Sean.
“But you have just got to take it on the chin and just move on. I took it as a bit of banter. Some people on Twitter gave me abuse but I didn’t take too much notice.
“I don’t know why it should affect other people, it’s my eyebrows at the end of the day!
“I have been growing them out ever since though, I will be growing them to reach my forehead now. I won’t be getting them done again.”
Eyebrow aside, the frontman has had to overcome two serious hamstring injuries during an up and down 2018/9 season.
He scored ten goals in 23 games in the previous campaign, despite being out from November to March with a hamstring injury.
The former West Ham trainee, who signed for PNE from Cork City in 2017, has had two different hamstring injuries this season – but now only wants to look forward.
“It’s been a strange season in terms of having everything in it. I started pre-season and I was flying.
“Then I had bad injury in the last game of pre-season which was heart-breaking.
“I got back into the team and a month down the line, in November, I got another bad injury and I was ruled out for another eight weeks. It’s been a rollercoaster.
“Now though I feel like I am getting back to my best and at the start of January we went on a brilliant unbeaten run.
“I have scored a few goals and I wanted to score more but it’s about finishing the season injury-free and helping the boys finish as high as we can.
“Mentally obviously this season has been a big learning curve. People always ask: ‘Are the injuries in the back of your head all the time?’ But they can’t be, you can’t have it there if you are going to play the same way and be the same player as you were before.
“In that way, I like to push it to one side and continue with what I am doing.
“2018 was a bad year but 2019 has started off brilliantly and I have got myself back in the team, scored a few goals and helped the team go on an unbeaten run.”
You can read plenty more from Sean in Saturday’s packed edition of The One And Only, plus we have interviews with Callum Robinson, Ben Pearson, Darnell Fisher, Alan Kelly, Darren Carter and much, much more.
The 100-page edition of the official matchday programme is still just £3 and is on sale from Friday afternoon from the club’s Sir Tom Finney Stand ticket office and from the sellers inside and outside the ground on matchday, so make sure you pick up your copy.