Nick Swirad: Manchester to Bandar Seri Begawan and life as a professional footballer in Brunei

“In Brunei, there is a lot of coffee shop culture. It’s mainly you make your own fun with the lads, chilling out. We’re traveling quite a lot, every other game is in Malaysia, so we’re here, there and everywhere. So the downtime, there’s a seven-star hotel called the Empire Hotel. It’s crazy. There’s a nice beach there and it’s quite opulent and you can chill there, enter it for free. Thailand, I was in the middle of a village, in the middle of nowhere. So it was difficult.

“Just a little story on that. So we won the league and we had the open-top bus parade around the village. And literally the village is two streets! But the whole village came out and we were in the open-top bus, throwing down drinks, everyone’s absolutely steaming. And I think it took us about six or seven hours until the sun went down just to go up and down. It couldn’t go any slower! It was absolutely brilliant.

“Thailand, just on that point, there is a big difference when it comes to culture. So drink is quite a big part of the culture of football around the world in certain areas. Obviously in the UK non-league, goes without saying. Australia, it was there as well. Malaysia, it’s interesting because there’s the foreign players and there’s the local players. And usually there’s a divide in the teams, not in a bad way, but obviously one’s Muslim, they have their own way of going about things. And the foreigners have their own vibe.

“In Thailand, that was the first time over in this part of the world where I’ve experienced this… we’ve finished the game, everyone’s having a drink together, everyone’s enjoying themselves after winning the league. That’s something which you don’t get over in Malaysia or Brunei as much, because of the culture. I feel like sometimes that is a bit old school, but it brings the team together – that bonding.”