IN DEPTH WITH: Alan McLoughlin

In a pit of sectarian bile, McLoughlin was introduced by Jack Charlton from the bench at Windsor Park with the Republic needing a goal to ensure qualification for the 1994 World Cup. Fernando Hierro had given Spain the lead against Denmark, meaning a draw was enough to qualify but Charlton did not want to leave it chance.

Three minutes later they were 1-0 down, Jimmy Quinn scoring with a stunning volley. Now the Republic needed a goal. Three minutes after that, McLoughlin chested down a half-cleared Denis Irwin free-kick and rifled the ball beyond Tommy Wright from the edge of the box. McLoughlin ran off celebrating like Marco Tardelli. It was a moment of pure ecstasy on so many levels.

Almost 19 years later, in the wake of watching a Portsmouth under 14s side taste victory, McLoughlin headed to the toilet and passed just blood. The next day, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. It was a moment of pure pain on so many levels.

In the opening pages of his excellent book, A Different Shade Of Green: The Alan McLoughlin Story, these two experiences are intertwined in a bold and graphic first chapter that leaves little off the record and must be read to fully comprehend what McLoughlin was going through at the time.

Meeting McLoughlin in a hotel bar in Swindon, he is visibly well, although he admits to having ongoing concerns about his appearance, his hair just returning as well as faint rashes on his neck and hands.

I ask him about why he chose to link those two polar opposite moments so dramatically in his book’s opening stanza.

McLoughlin meets my eyes square on and explains: “That was the great high in my career and in my life to the absolute lowest point. The similarities between the two were how I dealt with situations. I never got carried away with the fact that I became a celebrity for the two or three weeks. I didn’t get carried away with it, that’s just who I am.

“I had to deal with being in the limelight and thankfully, in some way still being in the limelight because that goal is an iconic goal in Ireland, as others have been, then having to deal with issues of being told you have got cancer, and having to deal with it in a specific way.

“It’s the high and lows. One was a major high and the other a major low. In football terms as well, like I say to the players that I deal with, there are more lows than highs. You have to learn to live with the lows because they’re more frequent.

“When the highs come along, you enjoy that moment. That goal was a high and the low was finding out that (I had cancer). There’s only one way to deal with it. You have to meet it head on and you move forward and get on. In trying to draw both together, I felt was the best way to explaining the situation as best it could be, is that they are both equally important and both should be treated the same way.

“It’s something I worked on with Bryce Evans, who I collaborated with on with the book. I spent many, many hours speaking to him and the creativity is a mixture of Bryce’s influence and my input as well.

“I wanted the book to intertwine really, in terms of recent times; not just being one chapter and that being the end of it. It was him having his creative licence to do what he does and me having my input in how I would like to move forward, and I think it’s quite a powerful opening chapter.

“I felt that I didn’t want it to be page 170 that you read to. I want people to understand that’s what has happened recently. This is a major moment of my life.”

It is noticeable throughout the interview that McLoughlin avoids directly addressing the cancer by name where possible, perhaps for my benefit as he acknowledges the difficulty that many people - some he did not expect - had in contacting him after he was diagnosed.

“If you achieve something like I did which was significant, the adoration comes because people naturally give it – if that makes sense. It is people patting you on the back or you speak to the press or you do TV and it’s a natural consequence of that.

“When something happens that is outside their comfort zone, when someone does have something that affects them, their family, kids, wife or whatever, that becomes more difficult for them because it’s out of their comfort zone. The simple thing where someone might break that mould to go: ‘How you feeling? Are you ok?’ – I know it’s hard to do, I’ve been in that situation myself.”

For those people who did contact him McLoughlin is truly grateful, even if they just sent him a text message.

“I don’t do Twitter, I don’t do Facebook but I’ve got a text message. That simple text from someone, who maybe did not feel confident to pick up the phone and ask how I was, it’s a difficult thing to broach.

“They don’t know how I am feeling, they don’t know what state of mind I’m in, but that simple text message or being brave enough to pick up the phone was really important to me. It made me stronger because there were some real low days.

“I had to wait six weeks from diagnosis to operation. That’s a long time to live with the fact that you’ve got a tumour. You don’t know what’s happening, how long it’s been there, if it’s spreading, if it’s getting bigger and it’s a long time. It wasn’t a case of being diagnosed and then two days later having the operation and it being taken away.

“That gap in between was filled by people not phoning, people not wanting to text me. I’ll be honest, I was a little bit disappointed. Then other people made me feel upbeat and happy and I drew strength because they went out of their way, or out of their comfort zone, to contact me.

“For people to do that meant a lot and gave me strength. It’s a hard thing for someone to do, if you’re someone who is in that situation and unsure what to do, take the plunge because it will ultimately make the recipient – in this case me – feel a lot better.”

At the time, not only was McLoughlin’s family dealing with his own illness but also that of his wife Deby’s best friend Shelly. For staying strong to deal not only with his issues but also that of another family, who ultimately lost Shelly, McLoughlin has endless praise for his wife.

“Deby took on the mantle of looking after me and trying to keep Shelly strong but also dealing with her dying in front of her eyes. She deserves all the credit for how she kept things going.

“It was really tough period for everyone and the one person who deserves all the credit for that six weeks is Deby, my wife, because of how she managed to see us through it.”

In the book, McLoughlin says the fear of driving to the hospital having passed blood was only comparable to the fear he experienced on what became his most famous night in 1993.

Alan McLoughlin scoring for Swindon against Wolves in 1989

With the significance riding not just on the result of that Northern Ireland game, but also in terms of the larger political issues at the time, the pressure on McLoughlin and his Irish teammates was immense.

“There was the scariness of a football match where actually there were 100 years of issues and actually people dying around you,’’ he added.

“Before the game, after the game, in the game, when we had Special Branch on the bench with us, armed on the bench, it was a scary place to be, it really was. It was cauldron of sectarianism whichever way you want to call it.

“It was just open, you were caught in it. People were a metre behind you and you could hear every word. It was a scary place to be, the safest place to be was on the pitch.

“When I came on I was like ‘thank God for that’. You’re now focusing on what you’re doing. You can’t hear every word when you’re in the middle of the pitch and things are happening.

“I’m getting on with my job then, that was my job then. I’m paid to do that and I was told to go on and score. To finally do it was great.”

Scoring the goal itself was a special moment for McLoughlin, but for more personal reasons than securing his country’s place at the World Cup.

“The joy of scoring the goal was two-fold really. Number one, actually scoring a goal for the Republic of Ireland, the team who I chose to play for. I had been close so many times and it hadn’t happened.

“If you’ve seen the YouTube footage of it, I go ballistic. It’s not because I realised that I might have scored the goal that had taken Ireland to the World Cup, it was ‘thank Christ I’ve scored eventually’.

“That’s what I was, a goalscorer and I’d hit the post, I’d hit the bar three times, had one off the line and (forced) great saves. Now I’d broken that duck. That’s all that mattered to me in that moment. I had scored an international goal.

“I’d made my league debut for Swindon on September 12, 1986. That was as important and significant as when I retired on the April 20, 2002. Those little milestones, that’s how important it was for me. It was a high and that was followed by (the high) that we had qualified.”

When you hear that level of honesty coming from someone in such a compelling way, it makes perfect sense to put McLoughlin’s words in a book. The man himself though was reluctant to do so, but admitted that finally discussing his illness with Evans, his collaborator, was cathartic for him.

“Writing the book with Bryce has been my only outlet in talking about what happened,” he says in a contemplative manner.

“The NHS is stretched and there’s no time afterwards to talk about the after care and people’s psychological state and how they are. I spent a year-and-a-half not talking about it, protecting other people as well, whether that being family or people close to me.

“I don’t want them to think I was worried or whatever. I’m just moving on with my life and trying to be as positive as I can. Obviously, you’ve got your demons and your doubts and you’re afraid and that hopefully manifests itself in what we’re trying to do in the book.

“I really didn’t want to do it to start with. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. I’ve been asked three or four times by publishers ‘Would I like to do something?’ and I’ve always said no because I really didn’t think there was any reason to do it.

“Since becoming not too well I just thought why not? It’s for my two girls, Abby and Megan.

“They’re Swindon girls so they hear the bits from older people that say their dad was a good player.

“They’re proud of their dad but they’re not really football fans and plus my parents live 170 miles away in Manchester and they haven’t spent much time with them, so they don’t hear the stories from my mum and dad on a regular basis of what their dad did as kid etc.

“I’ve kept it back from them, they’ll read the book fresh. They’ve seen the front cover but they’re going to read lots of things they did not know about their dad. It’s really a legacy for them and if they have children, that they can pass on. That was really the reason for doing it.”

McLoughlin is a reluctant star, someone rightly pleased of what he has achieved but not one to shout from the rooftops.

This comes across in the book and in person. Perhaps the best example is when discussing his recovery. After having an operation to remove the tumour from his kidney, McLoughlin was asked if he would like to take part in a trial for a new drug directly targeted at treating cancer of the kidney. He agreed, partly to give back to the NHS who treated him so well during his illness and also to help others in the same position.

“People have to do this to progress things forward,’’ he added. “It is a trial specifically for kidney cancer for people with tumours or have had a kidney removed. I don’t want to be martyr, I don’t hold my hands and think what I’m doing’s particularly special, I just feel like it’s the right thing to do morally.

“It’s been nearly two years now and I suppose my body had just adjusted to them. Hopefully it’s ok.

“My hair did fall out and I didn’t want to do a Bobby Charlton combover, so I shaved my head. At that point, I realised that I looked like a victim in that sense. People’s perception of someone who isn’t well or has cancer, is that their hair falls out etc.

“Those signs and symptoms weren’t there for me, physically I looked the same. Then all of a sudden on a very speedy basis, I suddenly realised that people would look at me in a different light. They’ll have known what happened and now they’re looking at me all of sudden. I’m feeling like a victim rather than me controlling the situation because I didn’t look any different. Now I do look different.

“People are like: ‘Is that Alan McLoughlin? Poor man, look at him.’ I could have tried to keep my hair but I’m one of them that if it’s going, then it’s gone. I’m not doing a sweepover, I haven’t got £30,000 to spend on a hair transplant, I’m not going to the wig shop to put a cat on my head.

“My hair is starting to make a little bit of a showing and I’m starting to get a little bit more hair under my armpit.

“It is a blind trial, so every three months I don’t know whether I’m on the drug or off the drug. I don’t know at the minute whether I’m on the drug as my hair is starting to grow back on my legs and other bits.

“All these little things that are inconsequential for three years, I’ve just got to put up with them. Hopefully at the end of the three years, I’m some way to feeling a bit better.

“That’s why I think it’s worth doing. I’m not a quitter. I could have dropped out after three months because that’s when the major things started to happen but I was in for a penny and stayed on.”