Pic: Andy Nunn
IF you're wondering if Chris Swailes still has the enthusiasm to play for Morpeth Town aged 45, here's the answer.
It's Tuesday evening, he's had a long day at work lugging hoses around for a company that supplies offshore gas and oil rigs and he's probably feeling the effects of playing two games in the last seven days.
But he's arrived at Whitley Bay for the Northumberland Senior Cup game well ahead of schedule and is happily chatting to The NLP.
So it's safe to say the uncompromising defender is still enjoying football five years away from his half century as much as he did when he was wet behind the ears?
“Even more now,” he says. “I'm here an hour early. So I'm going to have a little quarter-of-an-hour nap ready for the big game.
“I'm loving it. I'm 45 now, 46 this year, so I would be mad not to enjoy it. Especially when we're doing well, which we are. We're having a great run in the Vase and doing well in the league.”
As the man himself puts it, he just “doesn't know when to say no.”
“I retired for a bit and then I came back,” Swailes says. “I've been doing the coaching a long time and I had two part-time jobs at Newcastle United and Gateshead College. Then I went for it and got the assistant manager's job at Hamilton.
“At the turn of this year, things weren't working out and I left so, needs must, I put my boots back on for Morpeth.
“I got a call from the manager Nicky Gray, who I've known for a while and worked with at Gateshead College. He asked if I fancied training for pre-season – one thing led to another and I signed for the season.
“When I went up to Scotland and I was watching training there's no comparison to taking part in it.
“Play as long as you can – although I don't think they meant as long as this! Play as long as you can, because you're a long time dead and all that kind of thing.”
Comeback
Swailes jokes that wife Louise knows the boots aren't being hung up permanently just yet. They almost were nine years ago when a heel injury threatened to be too much to overcome.
He also changed his mind a couple of years after that comeback when he was all set for a coaching job in the Canary Islands.
Thankfully he did when, aged 41, he walked up the Wembley steps an FA Vase winner with Dunston UTS. It was his second medal having been on the bench for Bridlington Town's triumph in 1992.
That was meant to be the former Doncaster Rovers, Ipswich Town, Bury, Rotherham and Blyth Spartans centre-half's swansong, but he just can't kick the habit of kicking a football and strikers.
Two years ago, however, his body almost did it for him.
“It was February 19, 2014,” Swailes says. “I knew there was something wrong before this game because I'd had breathing problems. Then I couldn't breathe on the pitch, I just couldn't get my breath.
“They took me to hospital and found out I had atrial fibrillation. I was put on warfarin and beta blockers, and I had three cardioversions (controlled electric shocks to kick-start a regular heartbeat). So in effect they killed me three times because they had to start my heart again.
“In the end that didn't help and I had keyhole heart surgery. They put in two valves so I can breathe better – and people keep saying why are you still playing?”
The scare made him stop “burning the candles at both ends”. His obsession with fitness hasn't diminished and when pre-season came around last summer he was prepared.
“When I left Hamilton I was out of work for two-and-a-half months,” he says. “So I thought, ‘I've got to use this time'. I ended up getting myself as fit as I possibly could.
“I ran four or five times a week and when pre-season came in late June I was ready. I'd done two months pre-season before it even started.”
As Swailes says, Morpeth are going well in the Northern League and have dumped out FA Vase holders North Shields on their way to the quarter-finals.
Up next are Western League outfit Bristol Manor Farm and Swailes is too long in the tooth to think too much about a third winners' medal.
“It's tongue-in-cheek singing Wembley songs but when you wake up Sunday morning you realise you're still a long way off and the opposition gets more difficult,” he says.
“We know the teams in the quarter-finals are excellent – the Herefords and Salisburys. Bristol Manor beat Sunderland from our league and that's no mean feat on their patch.
“But it's exactly like Dunston when we were doing well in the Vase and won at Wembley; it replicates in the league and you can't wait to play the next game. That's what's happening here.
“It's going to be a hard task, really difficult with the teams in it. But hopefully we can be in that last four. I'd love to see it. Especially for the chairman Ken Beattie. It would be great for him.”
It would be some story for Swailes too, who is still battling it out with jet-heeled youngsters. “It's called dropping off,” he laughs. And he's about to do just that with that pre-game power nap.
*This article first appeared in The NLP on Sunday, February 14
