MY FUTURE WAS CRYSTAL CLEAR

Healy: Chance encounter in European clash saw my footballing career come full circle.. it reminded me of my first job and I'm content to have taken on another

- BY MARK McCADDEN

For goalkeeper Lorcan Healy, it was a “real full circle moment.”

A few weeks earlier, Healy had made the decision to step away from football at the end of the season, at the age of 25.

In a bizarre twist of fate, sitting on the opposite bench in Tallaght Stadium that night was a man called Phil Holah, the Premier League side’s senior kitman.

Holah and Healy grew up in the same village in Sussex, and they coached together at the local Crystal Palace Development Centre.

So when Healy was 16, and dreaming of becoming a professional footballer, Holah was giving him a lift every Friday night to and from the centre.

Now here was the goalkeeper, nine years later, ready to hang up his gloves and focus on his thriving sports apparel business, and sitting right across from him on the biggest stage of his time in the game was his old friend from East Grinstead.

“Meeting him after the game, that was funny,” Healy said. “The last time I saw him I was about 16. He'd pick me up and wed drive to the Development Centre.

“I was coaching the young kids at the Crystal Palace Development Centre and he was one of the kitmen at Palace at the time, but was also doing a bit of coaching.

“At the Development Centre they wanted the goalies to be trained and I think I was playing for Sussex County at the time and had a decent reputation.

“So I came in to give the goalies training for about a year. That's when Phil was giving me lifts back and forth on Friday evenings.

It was my first job, actually. It was great, you got paid for that.

“I have known Phil for years. He's the head kitman now. That night in Tallaght was a real full circle moment.”