Love Island winner Finn Tapp is now a football mentor at academies

‘I was a Love Island winner, now I mentor footballers’: Finn Tapp starred on ITV2’s reality show but is back to his first passion… after being released by MK Dons as a teen, he now visits club academies advising footballers about not making it pro

• Tapp shot to fame when he won Winter Love Island with Paige Turley in 2020
• He was previously a professional footballer at MK Dons, but got released
• The 23-year-old is now using his platform to give advice to academy players 

When someone hears the name Finn Tapp, they’d be forgiven for thinking about 35-degree heat in the south of another continent and a winter in swimming trunks by the pool.

But there’s a lot more to the former Love Island winner than a £50,000 prize pot, Instagram influencing and a famous relationship with Paige Turley.

Tapp grins, talking about how he’s still recovering from a ‘party holiday’ skiing in France and getting a tan in the sun, despite being in the snowy mountains, on a much-needed break.

But it’s back to work. It is a different type of trip Tapp looks forward to these days, visits to academies of professional football teams to talk to young players about trying to make it pro in the game – and what happens if they don’t.

It’s something the 23-year-old is passionate about. Why wouldn’t he be? He went through it all himself just a few years ago. And it’s not easy.

Finn Tapp is going into the academies of football teams to give young players advice

Tapp played for MK Dons as a youngster and spent one year as a professional before being released by the club

He went onto win Winter Love Island in 2020 with now-long-term girlfriend Paige Turley (left)

ITV2 viewers got fully behind their blossoming romance back in January/February 2020

‘It’s a bit of a whirlwind of a time,’ Tapp tells Sportsmail, speaking of becoming a professional footballer at MK Dons as the grin disappears. ‘At the best of times it’s absolutely crazy, but when I went through it we had one manager for the whole season and he got sacked maybe two months before our decisions were meant to be.

‘It got to the point where it was like, “Please give me a decision”.’ Then the other manager got sacked and it was just a whole mix of who would be in charge and who would be in charge next year.

‘There was one manager who then gave me my pro. He had worked with me through the academy and gone and done his own thing and came back as the first-team manager, but then he got sacked too, so it was a new manager for the next season.

‘It was all very up in the air and a very turbulent time. But I was so ecstatic to get it because you work years to get the professional contract and you’ve finally got it. Then it was a case of going away, doing off-season and then coming back in for your first season in the pro environment.’

Tapp was on top of the world. Obviously. He’d made it. A professional footballer, sorted for the next 15 years. Or so he thought.

Not everything was as rosy as it seemed. He had to continue fighting – perhaps even more so – to chase his dream.

‘With the chats I have with the academies I try and split it into two,’ he says. ‘First, the transition between going into the professional environment from the academy, because that was the transition that I found probably the most difficult.

‘It was difficult in a sense that you’re quite naive to it. You’ve been enjoying the years in the youth team and you think it’s going to be the same, where you might not perform all week or not be bothered to train but you will still play at the weekend because they’ve only got two centre-backs. 

Tapp was at the academy in MK Dons from the age of eight but had his dream taken away from him after just 12 months in the first team

‘But in the pro environment you have people that have mortgages, you’re playing with 28-plus-year-olds, and this is their livelihood. You have to try and rip their number off their back and show you’re good enough to play even though you’re only 18 or 19.

‘Then I speak about the transition between going from pro to semi-pro.’

Unfortunately for Tapp, that’s a transition he had to experience. He confesses that football was his life from as soon as he could walk, but he almost had that taken away from him just one year after going pro.

‘I signed for Oxford City and must have played for them for maybe a month or two,’ he says. ‘I was training Tuesday evenings and Thursday evenings and playing on a Saturday.

‘I’d say it was the period in-between which was most difficult because it’s all you’ve ever known, football. I had eight weeks off and it’s like, “Well what can I do now?” Some of my pals weren’t even out of uni and I had already hit such a big hurdle in my career and I was only 18 or 19.’

He went semi-pro and signed for Oxford City, still a teenager, following his release

Tapp didn’t want to give up on his dream despite dropping out of the professional game

He also worked a more regular job on the side in a recruitment office in London

Tapp got another job on the side. A more normal job, if you like, in a recruitment office in London. ‘Amazing,’ he describes it, but then the opportunity of a lifetime arrived.

Love Island. The hottest show on TV that would propel anyone that could last longer than a day into overnight fame. The producers wanted to fly him out to South Africa immediately. It wasn’t part of the well thought-out plan.

‘It was certainly a conversation I had to have with my dad,’ he admits. ‘My dad was at every single game. He drove me if I had an away game on a Tuesday and would take a day off work.

He had a decision to make about his football career after his time on Love Island finished

‘I sat down and found myself in the stage where I’d overcome the hurdle of getting released from Dons and I’d established myself at Oxford. I was playing week in, week out, really enjoying my job in London, and then the opportunity for Love Island came around. It was like, “What do I do here?”

‘It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to go on the show, but I was very happy and content with what I was doing. I think what sort of swayed my decision is I was still young, 20 at the time. If it did fail and I only went on for a couple of days and no one wanted to pick me and I left, I could have gone back, tail between my legs and gone to Oxford and said, “Look, please understand that it was once in a lifetime,” and I always thought that could potentially happen. But it was just too big an opportunity to pass on.’

Two months on and the unthinkable happened. Tapp won the show alongside Turley – now his long-term girlfriend – and became a mainstream celebrity. His career had taken the sharpest of turns.

What next? The dream of being a footballer wasn’t dead – he knew that – but there was a very strong string that had been added to his bow that had opened up a whole new world of opportunities.

‘How the show ended up happening was the only outcome I didn’t expect, having done quite well on it,’ he admits. ‘Coming off the show you sort of get led down this path, you’re branded a reality star now and it’s hard to shake.

Tapp admitted he didn’t expect to win the show and that he was prepared to last just a few days

He picked up a £50,000 prize pot and propelled to overnight fame following his success

‘I really wanted to get back into the footballing environment because that was something I had been passionate about since I was just a kid.

‘I was someone before the show, I’ve got passions other than just Instagram and stuff like that. But with other work commitments I knew that I couldn’t get back into football just yet, because it might mean that I’m ringing the gaffer and saying I can’t make training or play at the weekend, and I don’t want to do that. I would hate if I was in the changing room and someone else was doing that, so I wouldn’t want to go into it half-heartedly.’

So fame, and football. That normally comes when you’re starring in the Premier League. But Tapp had the fame for a different reason. A usual combination via an unusual situation.

He wanted to get back into football. His emotions from his experiences at MK Dons were still fresh. But how? Then it clicked. He could use his platform to speak to young footballers about his experiences in their shoes, the experiences of turning pro and then everything falling apart.

Tapp hooked up with Turley on the show and viewers fell in love with their romance journey

The pair have been together ever since, and regularly feature on each other’s Instagrams

‘I feel like that’s giving me satisfaction of being back in the football environment, but I’m also helping the young boys who are about to make that transition like I did,’ he says, the grin returning.

‘That transition from pro to semi-pro is what I try and hit home with. Just because plan A hasn’t worked, there’s no saying plan B or plan C won’t be a better journey to your main goal.

‘It’s so important because it just gives me half-hour to an hour where I can sit these boys down and be like, “I lived through it, and it seems daunting, but it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be a professional footballer, it just simply means that you’re not ready or they’re not wanting a player like you this time.”

‘It’s just so important and I get a lot out of it coming away from there. Even if one boy takes just a tiny bit of my speech away then it’s better than nothing.

‘I think the coaches really enjoy it because I feel like they know that the younger players know it might be a little bit more relatable coming from me because it happened to me only three or four years ago.

In his work with academies, Tapp speaks about the difficulties of transitioning from being an academy player to professional

He also speaks about the struggles of falling out of the pro game and recovering from the set-back

‘It’s so raw for me still and I’ve still got a lot of emotions about it. It’s quite nice for me to sit there and go, “You know what boys, I know exactly what you’re going through because it was me only three years ago.”

‘It was only yesterday I was in the gym and on my way out there was a lad two years below me, and he’d always been at MK Dons the same as me. He’s going through the exact same thing as I did, he’s quite close to the door shutting.

‘I spoke to him about it and came away from that conversation glad that I bumped into him and hopefully he just feels a little bit better.

‘It’s why I’m going into the academies. The players love it. Sometimes I try and ask questions and sometimes they don’t have the most to say but you just hope that in the chat that I’ve had it’s gone in somewhat.’

And the ultimate aim is to expand. The plan is simple: get his message across to as many young players as he can.

He hopes to use his platform to help players before one day putting the boots back on himself

When Love Island and sport collide 

Tommy Fury: The most famous sportsperson to come out of Love Island. Brother of world heavyweight champion Tyson, Tommy came second on 2019’s edition of the show. He’s just welcomed his first child with Molly May-Hague, who he met on Love Island, and is coming off the back of a big boxing win over fellow personality Jake Paul.

Luke Trotman: Trotman was at Darlington when he hopped onto Love Island in 2020, and met Siannise Fudge along the way. They’re no longer together, but the couple came second to Finn and Paige in the first winter edition.

Greg O’Shea: O’Shea was a late arrival in 2019 series of Love Island, but won the show with Amber Gill. Away from reality tv, he was an Irish rugby union player and ended up playing internationally for the Ireland Rugby sevens team.

Others include: Tom Clare, Dennon Lewis, Jamie Allen, Aaron Simpson , Ovie Soko, Jacques O’Neill, Gemma Owen, Mike Thalassitis, Idris Virgo, Toby Aromolaran, Chris Hughes, Greg O’Shea, Theo Campbell, Curtis Pritchard, Luis Morrison, Max Morley, Jack Finchman, Rachel Christie, Medhy Malanda, Keanan Brand, Frankie Davie.

‘I’m going into Oxford United in the next couple of weeks and hopefully Peterborough as well,’ he boasts with pride.

‘One of my pals who I used to play football with, Robbie Simpson, he’s got a company called LAPS – Life After Professional Sport – and I was having a chat with him down at Charlton Athletic and it was the biggest crowd I’d had, loads of youth teams from around that area came and listened in so there must have been 200-odd players there.

‘I just want to try and get this message that I’m trying to portray to as big an audience as possible.’

And when all is said and done? ‘Hopefully one day, once maybe the time is right and my schedule is a little bit more structured, I’ll see if I can work out actually putting the boots back on.’

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