SIMON EASTWOOD
The Oxford United keeper doesn’t take football for granted...
WHEN Simon Eastwood says he’s lucky to be a footballer, he isn’t just spouting mediafriendly platitudes.
Five years ago, the Oxford United goalkeeper, now 28, turned his back on FC Halifax Town and almost found himself on the dole.
“I’d been at Huddersfield as a kid, then spent a season on the bench at Oxford,” he explains. “But I cancelled my own contract because I needed to play.
“That’s when I dropped into part-time football with Halifax. Training twice a week, games on a Saturday. I said to myself ‘It’s not permanent – I’m good enough to get back up’. That’s why I rejected a new deal.
“Straightaway, I got an offer from Grimsby. But it was weird. The manager literally said ‘You’ve got no chance of playing, I want someone to sit on the bench’. I walked away.
“After that? Absolutely nothing. No phone calls, no interest, no trials. By August, I was in big, big trouble. I was basically thinking ‘Right, I need to look for a new job’.”
Salvation eventually arrived in bizarre fashion.
Contract
“It was a Tuesday night, about a week before the season started,” recalls Eastwood. “I was invited to train with Bradford Park Avenue in Conference North.
“When I arrived, there must have been about five other keepers. I couldn’t believe it.
“But I did well and the manager said ‘Come back Thursday and we’ll get you signed up’. If he’d put a contract down there and then, I’d have signed it. I was desperate.
“Next morning, I got a phone call from an old agent up in Huddersfield. He said ‘Portsmouth have got no keepers, they’re in terrible financial trouble. Do you want to try out for them?’.
“They’d just been relegated from the Championship and I had to put myself up in a hotel for a week just to train. But it was a massive club and I just thought ‘I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose here’. I did well, they signed me up, and the rest is history.” Eastwood played 27 times as crisis-hit Pompey were relegated from League One. He impressed gaffer Michael Appleton, who subsequently took the big stopper to Blackburn and current club Oxford. “I remember signing a twoyear deal at Blackburn,” says Eastwood. “Exactly a year earlier, I’d had nothing. It was amazing. “Michael is one of the best guys I’ve worked with. He’s taken that initial chance and looked after me ever since. I guess it’s that old saying about who you know, not what.”
Not that Eastwood is reliant on patronage. Appleton departed for a coaching role at Leicester following last season’s League One campaign when the U’s finished a creditable eighth on their return to the third tier. And replacement Pep Clotet is just as enamoured with last season’s player of the year.
In fact, recent defeat to Brighton in the Checkatrade Trophy was the first game Eastwood has missed since his return to the club in summer 2016. “I think it was 75 games in a row,” he says. “I’m proud of that. For me, the goal now has to be getting back to the Championship and I’d love it to be with Oxford. “Pep has kept Michael’s backroom staff but he’s got his own way. He wants us to play attacking football, to press quite high. The training is sharp and you can see us improving.”
Eastwood, though, has suffered enough to be content with his current lot.
“I get the feeling nowadays that some people kind of take it for granted that they’re a professional footballer,” he says. “They think ‘That’s how it’ll always be’.
“But I’ve seen the other side. I know what it’s like to be scrambling and desperate. And I was a young guy. Now I’ve got a wife, a kid. For it to happen at this age must be horrible. I know how lucky I am.”