By Marie Crowe America is known as the land of opportunity and former SSE Airtricity League player Jamie Duffy is making the most of his. He lives in Los Angelus now where he works as a football coach and has a pretty remarkable story to tel
By Marie Crowe
America is known as the land of opportunity and former SSE Airtricity League player Jamie Duffy is making the most of his.
He lives in Los Angelus now where he works as a football coach and has a pretty remarkable story to tell. As well as having a League career, Duffy has been in a boy band, featured on the X Factor and also recovered from a life-threatening illness. The Dublin native has crammed a lot into his 34 years of life and in ways he is just getting started.
His dreams of being a footballer began on the streets in Tallaght and much of his youth was spent kicking around with his brother.
On the day this interview is conducted, his former club Shamrock Rovers, have released videos of their youth coaches Damian Duff and Glenn Cronin playing on the streets, in a bid to get kids out kicking ball over the Christmas break. Duffy has watched these clips and is a big supporter of what the club are trying to do.
“I really encourage kids to go and play just like the two lads are in the videos,” explained Duffy.
“Nobody really does it anymore. Kids are more sheltered. It’s great to see Damien Duff out there, someone who has had a career like he had, doing things like that to encourage the kids.
“When I was a kid I was so used to being outside, it was a habit but now I think kids are used to sitting inside and their parents encourage them to do that because they don’t want them outside. It’s a different generation now.”
Duffy’s first team was Kingswood Football Club in Tallaght and, like most aspiring footballers, he had big dreams of making it in England. After a few stints in the underage ranks with St Patrick’s Athletic and Crumlin United, he landed at Kilkenny City before making the move to Shamrock Rovers.
“The hopes in the early days were a career to England and there were a few clubs interested but it didn’t work out for me. It was a few things, performances in certain games that the scouts came to see and I didn’t get that bit of luck.
“I ended up staying in Ireland and I was happy to do that. Getting paid to play when you are 20 is great; having a career in the League of Ireland is a good achievement.
“Shamrock Rovers was always my club so it was great to play for them, Pat Scully was the manager at the time, I had a good relationship with him at the start and I really enjoyed the first few months at Rovers.
“After a few months the relationship with Pat started to break down over certain things. The fans started getting on my back and I never really got to have a conversation with them, defend myself. I was a creative player, I couldn’t deal with someone berating me or screaming at me.”
Although Duffy’s relationship with Scully improved, he ended up going to Longford Town on loan, and from there he went to Dundalk where he really flourished, winning the First Division in 2008, making 38 appearances and scoring eight goals.
Then, he moved on to Drogheda United, but by this stage the recession had set in and the League landscape had changed dramatically.
“The recession really hit hard and clubs struggled to pay players. The League took a massive hit in many different aspects because of it. Everything that the League was trying to do stalled at that point. Players needed to be paid to support themselves and their families. Some clubs were worse off than others. It was a very difficult time for everyone involved.
“I started to look at different options then see what was out there. It was hard to juggle everything, you needed a stable 9-5 job that supported football, I started working in a gym and that was okay. I was asked then would I like to be involved in a boy band called Boulevard, at first I said no, not a chance but they assured me that they had a deal and that it was going to work out.
“So I went for it, I was in my mid-twenties; the other lads in the band were younger. The lads in football were giving me stick for it. If it had worked out it would have been great but it didn’t and we were dropped. It was a good experience alright.”
When the band didn’t work out Duffy returned to Longford and it was while he was there that he started to experience some devastating health problems that turned his world upside down.
“The manager said to me that he thought I looked skinny and noted how I had been a big strong lad when I signed first, now I was being knocked off the ball. I had been feeling bad but at that point but when it was pointed out to me I felt I should go and get checked out. I went to the doctor a couple of times and I was given some antibiotics and sent home. They didn’t really pick up on anything.
“I wasn’t getting better and I was struggling to train so the doctor sent me to the hospital for a chest x-ray. It turned out that I had a tumor and a collapsed lung and because of that I had fluid in the lung.
“The doctors said that tumor was either a teratoma tumor or lymphoma cancer and he said there is a good chance in the next three or four months that you will die. So I was in hospital for most of 2013. They were doing tests for four or five months trying to determine what it was but they were reluctant to operate because it was so big.
“Eventually it got to the point where they had to operate or I only would have had a year to live. I was in hospital for a few months and then they told me after lots of tests that it wasn’t cancerous.”
“Football wasn’t even on my mind when I got that news; it was just so serious any thoughts of it went out the window. It’s not like it was an ankle injury or a leg break, those kinds of injuries you might be thinking of recovery and returning to play but I was just thinking about life or death.”
After the operation Duffy was allowed to return to doing normal things but it was going to take time to get moving like he used to. Slowly but surely he began to transition from walking to jogging, then to full on running. However the doctors had told him that he would probably never play football again.
“Even though I was told no I tried anyway, I knew someone at Shels and I called him and said I’m okay I’m ready to play. This was six months after the operation and it was pre-season time. So I went along for a session, the lads there were doing heavy running.
“I was always decent at the fitness side of the game but I couldn’t keep up and I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to get back to the level I was had been at before. It was hard to take but at least I had tried.”
At that point Louis Walsh contacted him about trying out for X Factor. He was reluctant at first but since he couldn’t play football anymore so he decided to give it a go.
“Louis had kept in touch with me when I was sick and when I couldn’t be a footballer anymore he convinced me to do the show. It was nerve racking doing it but I got to the last 10 in my category and that was that.
“I had other things that I wanted to do too, I had looked at going to California to do some coaching so after X Factor I flew over there. The view was to have a paid holiday but I ended up staying here, setting up my own little company coaching in LA. That was three-and-a-half years ago.
“With the health issues I had the weather in Ireland wasn’t conducive, it was a chest tumour and I had a lot of chest and throat problems because of it and I was getting sick a lot at home.
“To move to a sunnier drier climate was a good decision, I haven’t been sick since I got here and all the checks have been good. I wanted to stay in football if I could at all. Even if I was at home I would like to have stayed in football so I’m happy with what I am doing now.
“I work in Malibu, Santa Monica, and the Palisades area and they are all lovely, running coaching camps. I live in Hollywood and that is more nightlife and fast paced. You get whatever you want here, if you want to go to the beach you can, down town LA is like a mini New York. There are areas where you go further south that is more family orientated. It’s a really nice place to be."
Duffy has made a life for himself in LA and plans to stay for the foreseeable future. He misses home and he still keeps up to date with what is happening on the football front, especially at Shamrock Rovers.
“If I’m ever at home I always go up to Tallaght and watch a Rovers game, it’s still my local club and even when I had left after playing for them I would go and watch their games. I miss home, the people and the craic but I have settled here now and I enjoy it. One of my good friends here is Stephen McPhail’s brother so we chat about football a lot and he keeps me informed on what’s happening at the club.”
“At that time when I got out of hospital things weren’t great in Ireland. Everyone was scrapping for jobs and at that stage I’d only ever really been a footballer or chanced my arm singing. I didn’t really have anything to fall back on so being here and being able to continue in football is a good path to be on.”
Duffy would like to return to Ireland someday but the opportunity has to be right. So, for now, his American Dream continues.
