{"id":663700,"date":"2026-06-29T03:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T03:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663700\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T03:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T03:20:18","slug":"pierce-sweeney-exeter-city-captain-departs-after-10-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/663700\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierce Sweeney: Exeter City captain departs after 10 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Analysis &#8211; Brent Pilnick, BBC Sport, Exeter<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For a club that prides itself on blooding young players and moving them on, Pierce Sweeney&#8217;s Exeter career was the opposite.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Handed his chance at first-team football by Paul Tisdale after moving from Reading a decade ago, the Irishman quickly established himself as a fans&#8217; favourite.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While not necessarily blessed with the greatest physical attributes Sweeney made up for it with his heart, determination and leadership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He helped the club have arguably the most successful spell in their history &#8211; gaining promotion to League One in 2023 after some play-off final defeats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Admired as much for his work and personality off the field as on it, the affable defender will be missed by many at St James Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis &#8211; Brent Pilnick, BBC Sport, Exeter For a club that prides itself on blooding young players and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-663700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}