ANDY LYONS KNOWS that a smile goes a long way to hide the pain from others.
And there it is on the platform at St Annes-on-the-Sea train station, five stops and 26 minutes west of Preston.
The two carriages have just passed Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club – where Seve Ballesteros won his first Open Championship in 1979 – and will rattle on towards Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Lyons is waiting and smiling.
If it wasn’t for the protective moon boot on his left foot, you’d never guess there was a thing wrong in his world, or that just 48 hours earlier he got the kind of injury news that every footballer in the final six months of their contract dreads.
Lyons thought it was “a bit of tendonitis”, painful but manageable, something several of his Blackpool teammates already suffer from. He prepared himself for the pain of getting through the rest of the season until it began to feel too much in the FA Cup defeat away to Ipswich Town on 10 January.
Lyons got through that game and played 52 minutes of the following week’s 2-1 defeat away to Barnsley. He barely trained after that but, with Blackpool’s injury list already lengthy, he went on the bench in case of emergency the weekend before The 42 arrived.
Painkillers were required just to get through the warm-up.
The results of a scan came on Sunday afternoon as the boyhood Arsenal supporter watched Matheus Cunha score a late winner for Manchester United in a 3-2 victory at the Emirates Stadium.
“I got the call just as he was about to shoot,” Lyons says.
The tendonitis he hoped for was actually a torn Achilles in his left foot.
All of a sudden he felt a familiar kind of numbness.
His partner, Annmarie, was having one of her usual Sunday afternoon naps when all of a sudden, she felt a presence lingering above her.
He woke her up with the news: eight weeks out, possibly 10.
Lyons found comfort in a loving, protective embrace from Annmarie, and then they found comfort together with a McDonald’s. They felt sorry for themselves with chicken burgers, chicken nuggets and chips.
Lyons turns 26 in August and his future is as uncertain as Blackpool’s, who are now just one point above the League One relegation zone.
“My main aim for this season was to prove my fitness after everything else that has happened,” he says. “And now…”
Now he doesn’t know what is next. Blackpool hold an option to extend his contract for another season. If they are in League Two, then Lyons will have to take another pay cut. But that’s only if they trigger it.
There are whispers of interest from elsewhere but nothing concrete. Things go quiet on all fronts when you’re injured at this stage of a season.
The 25 games Lyons played before this latest setback helped to restore so much of the confidence that had been lost during 431 days of recovery from an ACL injury that put his career on hold between February 2024 and May 2025.
He pleaded with Steve Bruce, the Blackpool manager at the time, to include him in the matchday squad for the final day of last season, and that provided the impetus to kick on over the last five months.
This injury is nowhere near as serious as the ones he has already dealt with, but the timing is significant and that’s why it would be easy for Lyons not to love the game on a day like this.
It would be even easier to close the door of the apartment he has lived in for the past three years with Annmarie and shut the rest of the world out.
The walk from the station to their apartment block is only a few minutes and Lyons is happy to get some fresh air. He hasn’t got a choice, to be honest. Annmarie has the A-Class Mercedes that they share – he passed his driving test at the fourth time of asking two weeks ago – but will be back from work shortly.
She’s a self-employed Pilates and fitness instructor who has been able to grow her own business.
She taught a couple of classes in nearby Lytham earlier in the morning and will be back in Preston for a few more hours in the evening, meaning that even if her other half was fit, she would have been unable to watch their game with Stockport County later on.
Lyons starts to make scrambled eggs after Annmarie arrives. He prefers them runny; she wants them well done. Annmarie has also picked up his favourite chocolate-covered custard creams from Marks and Spencer.
Lyons makes The 42 some scrambled eggs.
This is a young Irish couple forging a life together, dealing with uncertainty and navigating it in unison.
“You plan for your future and because of football, it’s always done by thinking of the worst case scenario,” she says.
They talk about getting married, trying to buy a home, and starting a family of their own.
“We have these conversations all the time. When you first come over, you don’t think you will have to consider these big life decisions,” he says.
Life, they say, is on hold.
“Everything is so unpredictable,” Annmarie says.
“You never know where you might have to be,” Lyons says. “You have to look at it like the club isn’t going to take the option, so you plan for the worst.”
Maybe that’s part of the reason why, three years after arriving, their apartment is still on a month-to-month lease.
Lyons’ framed Ireland U19 jersey from the semi-final of the European Championships in 2019 is still resting behind their white, L-shaped couch. They’re not allowed to put nails in the walls to hang anything up.
Memories of home are everywhere. There is great sadness and deep joy, the most stinging grief, and also reminders of the resolve that has brought them to this point and makes them believe their future is together, and that it will be happy.
…
Theirs is a modern love story.
“I got his Snapchat first,” Annmarie beams.
She went to watch the Bohs U19s because her friend was going out with forward Cristian Măgeruşan.
One of nine siblings, she is the oldest girl and has two older brothers.
Growing up in Lucan and Maynooth, football was a passion into her late teens. She would also end up playing for Bohs – “I’m not even the best right back here,” Lyons jokes – and for a while they were a couple at the same club.
Andy and Annmarie.
Lyons was viewed as one of their own at Dalymount Park and when he scored a goal in the derby with Shamrock Rovers, a photo went viral online of the two of them driving through Phibsborough in her convertible with the top down.
“That was only because we had his scooter in the back and it was sticking out.”
She was also in the car alongside him when news leaked that he was on his way to sign with Rovers for the 2022 season. The angry messages came flooding in. She had his phone and was seeing all sorts getting sent to him on social media, privately and on the public feeds.
She urged him to ignore it all.
“And then some fucker wrote, ‘And your bird is rotten too!’ I was like, ‘Excuse me? I’m not the one signing for Rovers!’”
Annmarie bursts out laughing at the thought of it.
“What was the other one?” she asks.
“They were calling me Ned Flanders, a little posho,” Lyons laughs.
She checks the time and begins to get ready for her next appointment of the day. We make tracks for a café in Lytham but before reaching the car, an elderly couple from their floor wave and say hello from a distance.
“They probably think that last email was about us,” she says to Andy.
“Which one?” he asks.
“About the smell of marijuana in the building.”
“No they don’t.”
“They do, I’m telling you. Sure I think we’re the only ones left on our floor.”
The drive back towards Lytham village is a short one. David Moyes has a house down one road near the water. Former Liverpool and Scotland midfielder Charlie Adam is also around the corner. Dubliner Ryan Graydon was a regular in the coffee shop we’re heading to before he packed up last week following a £600,000 (€693k) move to Salford City.
Annmarie drops us off and heads to work.
Lyons leads the way to Reggie’s, a café that is worth a visit for the chicken and honey pesto bagel alone, but also holds a somewhat sentimental place given it is owned and run by Rowan Roache, one of his former Ireland underage teammates, who is building his own life after football.
Blackpool teammate Zac Ashworth – son of former Manchester United sporting director Dan Ashworth – smiles and drops over for a chat as he picks up his coffee. He will be starting in the game later tonight.
Football has always been central to Lyons’ life.
His father, Maurice, founded Mount Merrion in 1981 and chose blue and white for their colours because of his love of Argentina.
“There were boxes and boxes of Argentina jerseys growing up,” he says.
Lyons began playing schoolboy football at home in Naas. His brother Kenneth – now his agent – was a couple of years older. His younger sister Heidi now plays rugby for Leinster and Ireland while his youngest brother Keith is studying computer science at Trinity College.
“I was in a bubble at home playing football,” he says.
Andy Lyons on Ireland U21 duty. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
That changed when he turned up on a random Tuesday night to chance his arm with St Joseph’s Boys U13s. He was soon training twice a week, extended to a third on Mondays when his father asked Paul Osam – whom he had helped get back on track in football with Mount Merrion years earlier, leading to Brian Kerr signing him for St Patrick’s Athletic – if he would consider him for an FAI Emerging Talent Programme in Mullingar.
Life was moving quickly in more ways than one. By this point, Lyons was 13 and had started first year of secondary school as a boarder in Blackrock College.
“I was in a dorm with 12 lads. One from Nigeria, two from Spain, there was a Russian, lads from Kerry and Cork. It was completely different,” he says.
This was the school his brother and his father also went to. “And my grandad and his dad.”
Maurice Lyons was a successful solicitor who built up his business over the course of 40 years. His offices on Parnell Square were next door to Sinn Fein’s Dublin headquarters.
Later, as a joke, when Bohs travelled to Greece to play PAOK in 2021 for a Europa Conference League qualifier and fans could not attend due to Covid-19, the club secured a media ticket for Maurice under the pretence he was there to cover the game for An Phoblacht.
Lyons pulls out of a photo of the pass and smiles.
Maurice and his wife Aileen were able to provide a life of great privilege but also love and support.
Not that Maurice’s romantic side has rubbed off on his middle son. He and Aileen met in south Dublin in the 1990s, but she moved to the Middle East to work as a nurse, and it was only when she returned a decade later that they got together.
“Dad wrote love letters to her all during that time she was away, I don’t know if she was writing back,” Lyons says.
The Lyons family when Andy signed for Blackpool.
Life in Blackrock meant rugby could not be ignored, and while he played one year as a winger, it was never going to catch on. “I kicked the ball down the line and tried to get it over the line that way,” he laughs.
At Joey’s, he began to catch the eye of Bohemians manager Keith Long, and by the time he was in second year, his father made another sacrifice as his son began life with the League of Ireland club.
Along with Kenneth, the three of them moved out of the family home in Naas and lived in an apartment by Grand Canal Dock. It was closer to school – they were no longer boarding – and meant that when the day was over in school, he had to sprint to get the DART to Connolly Station and then show a turn of pace again to hop on the 27B bus for the Oscar Traynor Centre in Coolock.
When Maurice finished work each evening, he would then collect his son and they’d come home for dinner. They lived off steaks from a butcher’s off Parnell Square. Kenneth cooked them – medium rare – and Andy sorted the pasta and vegetables.
Maurice could put his feet up and relax. Well, until his younger brother Johnny would barrel through the door in his favourite black string vest or Netherlands jersey after finishing work around the corner.
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This was Men Behaving Badly, Blackrock style.
Johnny, of course, is Johnny Lyons, the legendary sports editor and radio presenter for 98FM. For that Bohs game in Greece, Kenneth was also there and his media accreditation was a nod to his uncle’s former employers.
Johnny and Maurice bounced off each other and the boys lapped up the laughter. While Maurice had his grá for Argentina, Johnny loved Ajax and the Netherlands. His distinctive voice, personality and zest for life echoed through the airwaves. Andy felt the gravitational pull in his presence, and when he later sat down with Mick McCarthy at Blackpool, his uncle was a natural conversation starter.
Johnny Lyons. INPHO
INPHO
“Mick had stories about Johnny from when he was Ireland manager and he’d turn up to his press conferences. He would ask me about him and then after a while, I had the nerve to ask him about Saipan. In fairness, he gave me his side of the story.”
He laughs as he recalls the crocodile tattoo Johnny had on his upper arm in tribute to the late Steve Irwin. He pulls up a photo on his phone and stares at it for a few seconds.
Johnny’s sudden death from a blood clot in 2015 was the first time his nephew experienced powerful grief and witnessed the vulnerable side of his father. “My dad worked all hours, every day, he did everything for us and I never saw him cry until Johnny died. It was also a nice touch for Denis O’Brien to deliver a handwritten note to the family.”
Time was moving on, too, and by the time he made it to sixth year, Lyons was now part of the first-team dressing room. Maurice moved back to the family home but would still spend nearly every day with his son on Parnell Square. “I was living in the basement of his office.”
Still, he required favours to get to training in Blanchardstown. Captain Derek Pender would collect him on the way from his bank job on Harcourt Street and Lyons would make sure to have his favourite salted caramel Fulfil bar and a Starbucks coffee ready and waiting.
Vice-captain Keith Buckley would give him a lift home. Their positive influence rubbed off, and on days off each Wednesday, Lyons would head to the Law Library where Bohs assistant coach Trevor Croly also worked to go through clips and help him develop his game.
Long oversaw it all and remained a guiding presence, on and off the pitch. He was the one who offered Lyons his first professional contract on €100 a week while he was still in school and part of the U19s.
“I bit his hand off and took it. We got paid every two weeks and I remember buying a Nike tracksuit, but after that, Dad did all my contract negotiations.”
Former Bohs boss Keith Long. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
Getting a move to England was always the dream shared by father and son. He spent a few weeks on trial during off seasons at Bohs with Crystal Palace and Wolves but nothing materialised.
He grew stronger and more assured in the League of Ireland.
And then Shamrock Rovers came back in for him. Linfield were also an option. By now he was an Ireland U21 international and so he phoned up his coach, John O’Shea, for some advice.
Lyons already knew. He had turned Rovers down a couple of years earlier but now Stephen Bradley was hard to ignore.
“I wanted to be the one to tell Keith, it was one of the toughest things I had to do.”
The first message he received welcoming him was from Rovers midfielder Gary O’Neill. He wanted to know how his new teammate would get to training and if he needed a hand.
Graham Burke and Sean Kavanagh lived nearby and brought Lyons into their car pool. Still unable to drive, he provided the coffees every day, and when he left for Blackpool, his thank you present to them was a gift voucher for Chapter One restaurant.
“The dressing room changed my perception of Rovers. I don’t know if it was jealousy before that, but once I was in, I saw that they were a group of players who would do anything for each other.”
Halfway through the season, Rovers knew Blackpool’s interest was serious. A deal would be struck to allow him join at the end of the 2022 League of Ireland season.
Lyons had time to prepare himself for life in England. “Ruthless” was the word that kept coming back from those in the Rovers dressing room who had experienced the professional game there.
Still, Lyons was flying. He was scoring and creating for Rovers – nine goals and nine assists in 46 appearances from left wing-back. They won the Premier Division and he left these shores as the PFA Young Player of the Year.
Stephen Bradley and his son, Josh (centre) celebrate the 2022 League of Ireland title with the Shamrock Rovers team. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
He was on the cusp of the next, exciting chapter of his life, and soon after arriving, he was surprised to get a text from Seamus Coleman offering advice, encouragement, and a reminder he would always be on the other end of the phone if needed.
Lyons was about to find out what he was really made of.
“It felt like the sun was always shining. I was thinking, ‘This is fucking brilliant. How good is football? How good is my life?’ It was all fucking great and then football, life, it brings you down to earth so fucking quickly. We had to realise that.
…
The Stockport County fans are, quite frankly, taking the piss.
They’re 2-0 up at Bloomfield Road and strengthening their place in the play-off positions.
One home supporter in the stand behind the goal closest to the visiting section has had enough. From the far side where players, friends and family, and in this instance The 42 sit, it’s not quite clear what he has done, but stewards and police march him down the steps and out.
“Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio.”
“Sit down shut up, sit down shut up.”
Then a chance for Blackpool. Top scorer Ashley Fletcher – a Manchester United academy graduate whose stops before here were at West Ham, Middlesbrough and Watford – is put through in the box on his left side for a golden opportunity to net his 13th league goal of the season.
He opens his body, sets, and flashes a shot inches wide of the far post. Some of his friends and family are a few seats away below the big screen and are in a state of despair.
Every goal counts down here. Whether it’s to help the team or yourself.
Andy Lyons in action for Blackpool. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Lyons makes an early exit from his seat so he can be down in the dressing room at full-time.
“Shouldn’t be too long, Annmarie will collect us outside after,” he says.
He misses a late consolation scored by one of his allies in the team, Josh Bowler, but there is no disguising a passive, lethargic performance that has left manager Ian Evatt fuming.
It’s almost 30 minutes before players begin to emerge. Fletcher is one of the first, and as he’s guided up a lift to see his family, he is limping in a pair of flip-flops after a tackle during the game. The white sock on his foot – with which he took his earlier shot – is soaked in blood that still seems to be flowing.
Lyons appears a few minutes later with two chicken wraps for the 10-minute car journey back to the apartment.
They’re both eaten by the time we walk through the doors. Lyons changes into his favourite grey shorts and lightweight Nike quarter-zip top.
It’s the same one he was wearing after the ACL surgery that brought a shuddering halt to his upward trajectory.
“It’s not a bone injury but it felt like someone was pulling the bones out of my leg,” he says.
Lyons remembers the date – 27 February 2024 – and everything about the night. He came on at half-time, was marking his former Ireland teammate Ollie O’Neill, and then seven minutes into the second half, his left foot stuck in the ground.
Andy Lyons prepares to return after 431 days with boss Steve Bruce (right). Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
There was a twist and a crunch, a sound he heard only once before when he suffered his first ACL injury just a couple of months after his uncle Johnny passed away.
Now there was the long bus ride home to Blackpool with his leg in a protective brace. He knew, his teammates knew, and the medical staff knew. But no one said anything. The pain and the worry lingered.
Annmarie stayed up until he arrived home at 3am. She sat on their bed checking her phone, scrolling. “Basically just feeling sick,” she says.
He was tired and in pain but they were both still able to cry as they fell asleep together. The next morning it was as if he almost forgot about the night before. Until the pain hit again. He made it as far as the small hall between their bedroom and bathroom before he needed to sit down.
He dragged himself along the floor and sat fully clothed on the toilet. Annmarie heard a thud and came rushing in to see that he had fainted. His lips turned blue. She went into survival mode straight away, dragging him up so his leg had no weight on it and his head could rest beside the shower screen in the bath.
She ran back into their room to phone goalkeeper David Harrington – another of Lyons’ former Ireland teammates, who lives above them – to help as she didn’t want to move him again.
“It was frightening.”
Andy Lyons on the ground at Leyton Orient after suffering an ACL injury. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
A couple of days later it was almost worse. Lyons, being stubborn, decided he wanted to take a shower and would climb into the bath to have one. By now, his brother Kenneth had come to spend a few days, so when he fainted again, it helped that there was someone else for support.
Lyons broke down again.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
The scans showed damage to his anterior cruciate ligament, medial knee ligament and the meniscus. A tidy-up job on the previously successful surgery in Dublin would also be needed.
He shows the five different scars surrounding the knee and on the kneecap – the patella had to be taken out and repaired with a new ligament as part of the second operation.
“There’s this fucker here, this fucker here, this little fucker here…” he says, pointing to the scars.
They laugh.
Lyons eats his bowl of grapes, yoghurt and peanut butter as he scrolls through his phone to show pictures of the knee at this point.
It’s 11pm but the next hour continues to fly by.
The first surgeon he visited in Manchester said he would require two operations. Lyons wanted a second opinion so threw out a message to Will Smallbone, one of his closest friends in football, for a recommendation after suffering the same injury in January 2021.
“Dr Andy Williams,” was the immediate reply.
A consultation at his London surgery was swiftly arranged and a day later he went under the knife – just the once for a three-hour op.
Annmarie made it down in time as he came around and the “fucking horrible” journey back north to Blackpool at least had a slapstick comedy element.
“It was lashing rain,” Lyons says.
“The journey should only have taken a few hours in the car, but because of rush hour, it was more like seven.”
“And because of your bladder, Andy,” Annmarie teases. “He has the smallest bladder so every time we had to stop, it added on another 30 minutes.
“And it didn’t help that when we went to one services, you nearly kicked my crutches away from under me!”
“It was lashing rain, the ground was slippy.”
From left: Annmarie, Andy, Maurice and Kenneth after Rovers won the league in 2022.
They knew when they got home that the next three days would be horrendous. Williams braced them for that and said the third day post-op would be the worst.
“He was right,” Lyons said. “I didn’t know where I was going at that point.”
He couldn’t sleep for the next two weeks. Annmarie organised his pain medication in little bowls and made sure he took them at the correct intervals. She was there for the pain and the tears.
“I wasn’t getting through those days or all of the ones that came after without you,” he says, reaching his hand across the kitchen island to grip her open palm.
“If I was alone, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” he says.
“Thank fucking God I couldn’t find work and was able to be there so,” she says, laughing.
Another of Lyons’ best mates from the Ireland underage set up is Gavin Kilkenny and he visited the apartment with his dog for more moral support.
“It felt like so long before he could have any kind of independence. He was great at putting a smile on and going in to the club to do all his work, but behind that he was in pain,” Annemarie says.
“You were seeing the worst of me,” he says.
“It wasn’t the worst of you, it was just the worst time. Do you remember what you said to me on the bed? You said that in the space of six months, the two biggest fears you had in life came true.”
“Yeah, they did,” he says.
…
It was the small things with his father that he noticed first.
They worried him straight away.
Maurice would forget someone’s name or take longer to respond in conversation. He’d search to remember a word or a phrase when usually he was the one others tried to keep up with.
“He was always so sharp, so quick,” Lyons says. “The smartest person I knew.”
He got in touch with his mother to explain his concerns.
When Maurice’s speech deteriorated and his train of thought was also affected, it was clear that something was wrong.
Scans confirmed a brain tumour in early 2020. Surgery would be required to remove as much of it as possible with radiation needed to shrink whatever remained.
They were told there was a 60-40 chance against surviving the operation and that, regardless, this was an incurable cancer.
“He was given a year to live,” Lyons says. “I didn’t want to believe it, I didn’t want to listen. I was in denial.”
The Covid pandemic brought a whole other element of the scary and surreal to the situation.
Maurice survived the operation and began recovery in the family home in Naas. Lyons was emerging in the Bohs first team at this point, but also returned to be able to spend as much time with his father as possible.
But he still wasn’t processing what was happening.
“He wouldn’t speak about it at all,” Annmarie says. “He’d reply to everything with just, ‘He’s fine, he’s fine’.”
When his mother and father broached the subject in the house, Lyons would simply leave the room and ignore what was being said.
Sometimes he would be angry and sometimes he would cry.
That was partly down to the fact Maurice was responding well to treatment. “He was functioning, he could talk, but I never spoke to him about what he was going through. I totally blanked it from my mind to try and cope.
“I didn’t want to hear the answers or face the reality.”
He kept the seriousness of it all from Annmarie for almost four months before he finally confided in her.
“I kept telling her he was fine when she would ask and you begin to believe it yourself. I needed to open up to you, though.”
He eventually did the same in private with Bohs boss Keith Long and it was only when former Dublin Gaelic footballer Philly McMahon joined the backroom team as a performance coach that he did so with teammates.
McMahon spoke to Lyons about his own father passing away from cancer at the age of 64 in 2018.
He remembers an exercise with the rest of the first team in the centre circle at Dalymount Park. A ball of wool was passed around from player to player with each person asked to pull a string and speak about something they were fearful of in their life.
McMahon had worked with the players to get them to a point where they felt comfortable being vulnerable enough to discuss illness, deaths and miscarriages.
“Even in that moment, I learned so much,” Lyons says. “I broke down in the centre circle and told the lads about Dad.”
Philly McMahon during his time with Bohs. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
He kept that piece of string and would tape it around his wrist in games until it was worn down.
When he moved from Bohs to Rovers, the string followed. He didn’t inform his new club about the situation straight away but soon did – Bradley’s son Josh had also started treatment forleukaemiaa while assistant Glenn Cronin’s daughter Aoife had been diagnosed with a rare, malignant cancer known as soft tissue sarcoma.
Rovers’ former director of football, Stephen McPhail, also underwent successful treatment for a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma during his playing career.
Bradley helped Lyons thrive at left wing-back and when Blackpool made their move halfway through the 2022 Premier Division season, he pushed for the move straight away.
“Stephen knew about my dad and I went to see him alone to explain that I wanted to make this move for him, it was the dream
“Stephen said not to worry, he would make the move happen. There had been disagreements on price, but the next day, the deal was done.
“I couldn’t believe it. So in terms of what Stephen Bradley means to me? I can never thank him enough. Not just because of what he done for my career, but he gave my dad the thing he always wanted in life.”
Lyons responded by agreeing to stay until the end of the season so he could help Rovers win the league for the third season in a row.
“Dad ran on the pitch and hugged Stephen when we did it, that will stay with me forever.”
Annmarie points out the photo resting against the wall of the family celebrating together too, and there was still enough time for memories when they travelled over to watch him sign with Blackpool.
In the days before they played Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup on 17 January 2023, Lyons was told by boss Michael Appleton – including caretakers, he’s had six managers in total at the club – that he would make his full debut.
Maurice was in the grip of one of his chemotherapy weeks, meaning he could barely function. Somehow he made the trip with the rest of the family.
His son scored four times in 17 Championship games during those first six months, but Maurice was nearing the end as the cancer returned and was more aggressive.
For all those days he ignored the truth and tried to hide from it, Lyons at least made it back with the rest of his siblings to be with their father on the day he died – 4 September 2023.
Aileen made sure everyone was home in time, organising flights with Annmarie. The family all sat by his bed and had their own time to say goodbye. “We could tell him how much we loved him, what he meant to us when he was alive, and what he will always mean to us now,” Lyons says.
Looking out of the car window on the way to the funeral, he thought of his uncle Johnny. He saw Keith Long, Paul Osam and Stephen Bradley among the mourners outside the church.
Brian Maher and Brandon Kavanagh, two more of his closest friends, were there. Jack Byrne and Ronan Finn were side by side. Glenn Cronin also turned up.
“It meant the world to me.”
Annmarie, of course, was there, and would be too when they returned to England. When he began his recovery from his ACL, the stress and pressure were intense.
In a cruel coincidence, his sister Heidi was going through the same recovery at home in Naas.
“I was helping as much as I could here but sometimes I just didn’t have the answers,” Annmarie says.
“I wanted to know the answers too, I wanted to try and be able to understand or make sense of what was happening and how I could be there to help.”
It was months after the injury, while also still struggling with grief from Maurice’s passing, that he eventually took Annmarie’s advice and sought counselling. The PFA helped arrange things but he was still trying to hide from the reality, bumping into a friend of Annmarie’s while coming home from a therapy session and lying about where he had been.
“I was constantly crying, I was trying to understand the feelings I had because I’m usually such a positive person. You tell yourself everything happens for a reason and you believe it, but there are also times when you just don’t believe it.”
It’s not far off 1am by this point.
In their spare room, the wardrobe is full of jerseys he has collected during the course of his career to this point.
Blackpool teammate and Northern Ireland goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell brought him back Joshua Kimmich’s Germany shirt from international duty recently.
There’s a Jack Moylan one from Lincoln City while he also boasts a Nottingham Forest shirt from another FA Cup tie that belonged to the on-loan Gonzalo Montiel, scorer of the winning penalty for Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final.
Maurice would have loved that one for his collection.
…
No rest for the wicked, or the injured.
Annmarie is out the door by 7am for her first class of the day, Lyons will be in the pool with teammate Josh Bowler for 10am.
“Do you know what she said to me before she left?
“I hate that you get to stay in bed longer than me.”
He laughs; there’s that smile again.
Of course there is worry now, too, for what comes next with his recovery and what will be waiting after that.
“I feel like I can come back from anything after what we’ve already been through,” he says.
“I don’t have any doubts about that. I think I have shown that I can perform at Championship level, at least.”
But the English Football League can swallow you up. It’s a place where you can get lost in the mire quickly and forgotten about even quicker.
Blackpool know this better than anyone. They are one of nine former Premier League clubs (more than a third of the 24-team division) currently in the third tier, reaching the top flight for a single season in 2010/11 and on a steady decline ever since.
This was typified in very modern terms during a brutal run in the Championship of just one win in 17 games during Mick McCarthy’s ill-fated three-month reign between January and April 2023.
“It can’t go on like this,” a bereft reporter said.
The clip went viral, instant meme material that remains shorthand for any struggling club.
“I actually played my best football during that time,” Lyons says. “It’s funny but it’s also not, because it’s not a nice thing to have been part of that.”
Blackpool are fighting for their lives in the third tier, but then, so is every other club in the country given the recent annual survey of club finance directors by accountancy firm BDO found that 90% (nine out of 10) of clubs in the top four divisions are expected to announce pre-tax losses for 2025.
That is the landscape Lyons – and so many others – are part of and fighting to survive in, but for now there is still time to enjoy one last chicken pesto and honey bagel from Reggie’s.
Lyons and Annmarie have another journey to take into Manchester so he can have a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection into the Achilles that will help speed up the healing process and reduce the amount of pain during recovery.
It only takes around 15 minutes but Lyons has an idea of what’s coming.
”A few of the lads have had the same thing. They said it’s torture, absolute agony.”
Lyons then confirms as much after a check up from The 42 on WhatsApp.
“Probably worse,” he says, followed by a string of laughing emojis.
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At home with Andy Lyons: behind the smile is a fighter who wants to keep a dream alive
ANDY LYONS KNOWS that a smile goes a long way to hide the pain from others.
And there it is on the platform at St Annes-on-the-Sea train station, five stops and 26 minutes west of Preston.
The two carriages have just passed Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club – where Seve Ballesteros won his first Open Championship in 1979 – and will rattle on towards Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
Lyons is waiting and smiling.
If it wasn’t for the protective moon boot on his left foot, you’d never guess there was a thing wrong in his world, or that just 48 hours earlier he got the kind of injury news that every footballer in the final six months of their contract dreads.
Lyons thought it was “a bit of tendonitis”, painful but manageable, something several of his Blackpool teammates already suffer from. He prepared himself for the pain of getting through the rest of the season until it began to feel too much in the FA Cup defeat away to Ipswich Town on 10 January.
Lyons got through that game and played 52 minutes of the following week’s 2-1 defeat away to Barnsley. He barely trained after that but, with Blackpool’s injury list already lengthy, he went on the bench in case of emergency the weekend before The 42 arrived.
Painkillers were required just to get through the warm-up.
The results of a scan came on Sunday afternoon as the boyhood Arsenal supporter watched Matheus Cunha score a late winner for Manchester United in a 3-2 victory at the Emirates Stadium.
“I got the call just as he was about to shoot,” Lyons says.
The tendonitis he hoped for was actually a torn Achilles in his left foot.
All of a sudden he felt a familiar kind of numbness.
His partner, Annmarie, was having one of her usual Sunday afternoon naps when all of a sudden, she felt a presence lingering above her.
He woke her up with the news: eight weeks out, possibly 10.
Lyons found comfort in a loving, protective embrace from Annmarie, and then they found comfort together with a McDonald’s. They felt sorry for themselves with chicken burgers, chicken nuggets and chips.
Lyons turns 26 in August and his future is as uncertain as Blackpool’s, who are now just one point above the League One relegation zone.
“My main aim for this season was to prove my fitness after everything else that has happened,” he says. “And now…”
Now he doesn’t know what is next. Blackpool hold an option to extend his contract for another season. If they are in League Two, then Lyons will have to take another pay cut. But that’s only if they trigger it.
There are whispers of interest from elsewhere but nothing concrete. Things go quiet on all fronts when you’re injured at this stage of a season.
The 25 games Lyons played before this latest setback helped to restore so much of the confidence that had been lost during 431 days of recovery from an ACL injury that put his career on hold between February 2024 and May 2025.
He pleaded with Steve Bruce, the Blackpool manager at the time, to include him in the matchday squad for the final day of last season, and that provided the impetus to kick on over the last five months.
This injury is nowhere near as serious as the ones he has already dealt with, but the timing is significant and that’s why it would be easy for Lyons not to love the game on a day like this.
It would be even easier to close the door of the apartment he has lived in for the past three years with Annmarie and shut the rest of the world out.
The walk from the station to their apartment block is only a few minutes and Lyons is happy to get some fresh air. He hasn’t got a choice, to be honest. Annmarie has the A-Class Mercedes that they share – he passed his driving test at the fourth time of asking two weeks ago – but will be back from work shortly.
She’s a self-employed Pilates and fitness instructor who has been able to grow her own business.
She taught a couple of classes in nearby Lytham earlier in the morning and will be back in Preston for a few more hours in the evening, meaning that even if her other half was fit, she would have been unable to watch their game with Stockport County later on.
Lyons starts to make scrambled eggs after Annmarie arrives. He prefers them runny; she wants them well done. Annmarie has also picked up his favourite chocolate-covered custard creams from Marks and Spencer.
This is a young Irish couple forging a life together, dealing with uncertainty and navigating it in unison.
“You plan for your future and because of football, it’s always done by thinking of the worst case scenario,” she says.
They talk about getting married, trying to buy a home, and starting a family of their own.
“We have these conversations all the time. When you first come over, you don’t think you will have to consider these big life decisions,” he says.
Life, they say, is on hold.
“Everything is so unpredictable,” Annmarie says.
“You never know where you might have to be,” Lyons says. “You have to look at it like the club isn’t going to take the option, so you plan for the worst.”
Maybe that’s part of the reason why, three years after arriving, their apartment is still on a month-to-month lease.
Lyons’ framed Ireland U19 jersey from the semi-final of the European Championships in 2019 is still resting behind their white, L-shaped couch. They’re not allowed to put nails in the walls to hang anything up.
Memories of home are everywhere. There is great sadness and deep joy, the most stinging grief, and also reminders of the resolve that has brought them to this point and makes them believe their future is together, and that it will be happy.
…
Theirs is a modern love story.
“I got his Snapchat first,” Annmarie beams.
She went to watch the Bohs U19s because her friend was going out with forward Cristian Măgeruşan.
One of nine siblings, she is the oldest girl and has two older brothers.
Growing up in Lucan and Maynooth, football was a passion into her late teens. She would also end up playing for Bohs – “I’m not even the best right back here,” Lyons jokes – and for a while they were a couple at the same club.
Lyons was viewed as one of their own at Dalymount Park and when he scored a goal in the derby with Shamrock Rovers, a photo went viral online of the two of them driving through Phibsborough in her convertible with the top down.
“That was only because we had his scooter in the back and it was sticking out.”
She was also in the car alongside him when news leaked that he was on his way to sign with Rovers for the 2022 season. The angry messages came flooding in. She had his phone and was seeing all sorts getting sent to him on social media, privately and on the public feeds.
She urged him to ignore it all.
“And then some fucker wrote, ‘And your bird is rotten too!’ I was like, ‘Excuse me? I’m not the one signing for Rovers!’”
Annmarie bursts out laughing at the thought of it.
“What was the other one?” she asks.
“They were calling me Ned Flanders, a little posho,” Lyons laughs.
She checks the time and begins to get ready for her next appointment of the day. We make tracks for a café in Lytham but before reaching the car, an elderly couple from their floor wave and say hello from a distance.
“They probably think that last email was about us,” she says to Andy.
“Which one?” he asks.
“About the smell of marijuana in the building.”
“No they don’t.”
“They do, I’m telling you. Sure I think we’re the only ones left on our floor.”
The drive back towards Lytham village is a short one. David Moyes has a house down one road near the water. Former Liverpool and Scotland midfielder Charlie Adam is also around the corner. Dubliner Ryan Graydon was a regular in the coffee shop we’re heading to before he packed up last week following a £600,000 (€693k) move to Salford City.
Annmarie drops us off and heads to work.
Lyons leads the way to Reggie’s, a café that is worth a visit for the chicken and honey pesto bagel alone, but also holds a somewhat sentimental place given it is owned and run by Rowan Roache, one of his former Ireland underage teammates, who is building his own life after football.
Blackpool teammate Zac Ashworth – son of former Manchester United sporting director Dan Ashworth – smiles and drops over for a chat as he picks up his coffee. He will be starting in the game later tonight.
Football has always been central to Lyons’ life.
His father, Maurice, founded Mount Merrion in 1981 and chose blue and white for their colours because of his love of Argentina.
“There were boxes and boxes of Argentina jerseys growing up,” he says.
Lyons began playing schoolboy football at home in Naas. His brother Kenneth – now his agent – was a couple of years older. His younger sister Heidi now plays rugby for Leinster and Ireland while his youngest brother Keith is studying computer science at Trinity College.
“I was in a bubble at home playing football,” he says.
That changed when he turned up on a random Tuesday night to chance his arm with St Joseph’s Boys U13s. He was soon training twice a week, extended to a third on Mondays when his father asked Paul Osam – whom he had helped get back on track in football with Mount Merrion years earlier, leading to Brian Kerr signing him for St Patrick’s Athletic – if he would consider him for an FAI Emerging Talent Programme in Mullingar.
Life was moving quickly in more ways than one. By this point, Lyons was 13 and had started first year of secondary school as a boarder in Blackrock College.
“I was in a dorm with 12 lads. One from Nigeria, two from Spain, there was a Russian, lads from Kerry and Cork. It was completely different,” he says.
This was the school his brother and his father also went to. “And my grandad and his dad.”
Maurice Lyons was a successful solicitor who built up his business over the course of 40 years. His offices on Parnell Square were next door to Sinn Fein’s Dublin headquarters.
Later, as a joke, when Bohs travelled to Greece to play PAOK in 2021 for a Europa Conference League qualifier and fans could not attend due to Covid-19, the club secured a media ticket for Maurice under the pretence he was there to cover the game for An Phoblacht.
Lyons pulls out of a photo of the pass and smiles.
Maurice and his wife Aileen were able to provide a life of great privilege but also love and support.
Not that Maurice’s romantic side has rubbed off on his middle son. He and Aileen met in south Dublin in the 1990s, but she moved to the Middle East to work as a nurse, and it was only when she returned a decade later that they got together.
“Dad wrote love letters to her all during that time she was away, I don’t know if she was writing back,” Lyons says.
Life in Blackrock meant rugby could not be ignored, and while he played one year as a winger, it was never going to catch on. “I kicked the ball down the line and tried to get it over the line that way,” he laughs.
At Joey’s, he began to catch the eye of Bohemians manager Keith Long, and by the time he was in second year, his father made another sacrifice as his son began life with the League of Ireland club.
Along with Kenneth, the three of them moved out of the family home in Naas and lived in an apartment by Grand Canal Dock. It was closer to school – they were no longer boarding – and meant that when the day was over in school, he had to sprint to get the DART to Connolly Station and then show a turn of pace again to hop on the 27B bus for the Oscar Traynor Centre in Coolock.
When Maurice finished work each evening, he would then collect his son and they’d come home for dinner. They lived off steaks from a butcher’s off Parnell Square. Kenneth cooked them – medium rare – and Andy sorted the pasta and vegetables.
Maurice could put his feet up and relax. Well, until his younger brother Johnny would barrel through the door in his favourite black string vest or Netherlands jersey after finishing work around the corner.
This was Men Behaving Badly, Blackrock style.
Johnny, of course, is Johnny Lyons, the legendary sports editor and radio presenter for 98FM. For that Bohs game in Greece, Kenneth was also there and his media accreditation was a nod to his uncle’s former employers.
Johnny and Maurice bounced off each other and the boys lapped up the laughter. While Maurice had his grá for Argentina, Johnny loved Ajax and the Netherlands. His distinctive voice, personality and zest for life echoed through the airwaves. Andy felt the gravitational pull in his presence, and when he later sat down with Mick McCarthy at Blackpool, his uncle was a natural conversation starter.
“Mick had stories about Johnny from when he was Ireland manager and he’d turn up to his press conferences. He would ask me about him and then after a while, I had the nerve to ask him about Saipan. In fairness, he gave me his side of the story.”
He laughs as he recalls the crocodile tattoo Johnny had on his upper arm in tribute to the late Steve Irwin. He pulls up a photo on his phone and stares at it for a few seconds.
Johnny’s sudden death from a blood clot in 2015 was the first time his nephew experienced powerful grief and witnessed the vulnerable side of his father. “My dad worked all hours, every day, he did everything for us and I never saw him cry until Johnny died. It was also a nice touch for Denis O’Brien to deliver a handwritten note to the family.”
Time was moving on, too, and by the time he made it to sixth year, Lyons was now part of the first-team dressing room. Maurice moved back to the family home but would still spend nearly every day with his son on Parnell Square. “I was living in the basement of his office.”
Still, he required favours to get to training in Blanchardstown. Captain Derek Pender would collect him on the way from his bank job on Harcourt Street and Lyons would make sure to have his favourite salted caramel Fulfil bar and a Starbucks coffee ready and waiting.
Vice-captain Keith Buckley would give him a lift home. Their positive influence rubbed off, and on days off each Wednesday, Lyons would head to the Law Library where Bohs assistant coach Trevor Croly also worked to go through clips and help him develop his game.
Long oversaw it all and remained a guiding presence, on and off the pitch. He was the one who offered Lyons his first professional contract on €100 a week while he was still in school and part of the U19s.
“I bit his hand off and took it. We got paid every two weeks and I remember buying a Nike tracksuit, but after that, Dad did all my contract negotiations.”
Getting a move to England was always the dream shared by father and son. He spent a few weeks on trial during off seasons at Bohs with Crystal Palace and Wolves but nothing materialised.
He grew stronger and more assured in the League of Ireland.
And then Shamrock Rovers came back in for him. Linfield were also an option. By now he was an Ireland U21 international and so he phoned up his coach, John O’Shea, for some advice.
Lyons already knew. He had turned Rovers down a couple of years earlier but now Stephen Bradley was hard to ignore.
“I wanted to be the one to tell Keith, it was one of the toughest things I had to do.”
The first message he received welcoming him was from Rovers midfielder Gary O’Neill. He wanted to know how his new teammate would get to training and if he needed a hand.
Graham Burke and Sean Kavanagh lived nearby and brought Lyons into their car pool. Still unable to drive, he provided the coffees every day, and when he left for Blackpool, his thank you present to them was a gift voucher for Chapter One restaurant.
“The dressing room changed my perception of Rovers. I don’t know if it was jealousy before that, but once I was in, I saw that they were a group of players who would do anything for each other.”
Halfway through the season, Rovers knew Blackpool’s interest was serious. A deal would be struck to allow him join at the end of the 2022 League of Ireland season.
Lyons had time to prepare himself for life in England. “Ruthless” was the word that kept coming back from those in the Rovers dressing room who had experienced the professional game there.
Still, Lyons was flying. He was scoring and creating for Rovers – nine goals and nine assists in 46 appearances from left wing-back. They won the Premier Division and he left these shores as the PFA Young Player of the Year.
He was on the cusp of the next, exciting chapter of his life, and soon after arriving, he was surprised to get a text from Seamus Coleman offering advice, encouragement, and a reminder he would always be on the other end of the phone if needed.
Lyons was about to find out what he was really made of.
“It felt like the sun was always shining. I was thinking, ‘This is fucking brilliant. How good is football? How good is my life?’ It was all fucking great and then football, life, it brings you down to earth so fucking quickly. We had to realise that.
…
The Stockport County fans are, quite frankly, taking the piss.
They’re 2-0 up at Bloomfield Road and strengthening their place in the play-off positions.
The songs from the away end are hardly classics.
“Blackpool’s a shithole, I want to go home.”
“You’re fucking shit, you’re fucking shit, you’re fucking shit.”
“Going down, going down, going down.”
One home supporter in the stand behind the goal closest to the visiting section has had enough. From the far side where players, friends and family, and in this instance The 42 sit, it’s not quite clear what he has done, but stewards and police march him down the steps and out.
“Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio.”
“Sit down shut up, sit down shut up.”
Then a chance for Blackpool. Top scorer Ashley Fletcher – a Manchester United academy graduate whose stops before here were at West Ham, Middlesbrough and Watford – is put through in the box on his left side for a golden opportunity to net his 13th league goal of the season.
He opens his body, sets, and flashes a shot inches wide of the far post. Some of his friends and family are a few seats away below the big screen and are in a state of despair.
Every goal counts down here. Whether it’s to help the team or yourself.
The away end erupts again.
“You’re fucking shit, you’re fucking shit, you’re fucking shit.”
Lyons makes an early exit from his seat so he can be down in the dressing room at full-time.
“Shouldn’t be too long, Annmarie will collect us outside after,” he says.
He misses a late consolation scored by one of his allies in the team, Josh Bowler, but there is no disguising a passive, lethargic performance that has left manager Ian Evatt fuming.
It’s almost 30 minutes before players begin to emerge. Fletcher is one of the first, and as he’s guided up a lift to see his family, he is limping in a pair of flip-flops after a tackle during the game. The white sock on his foot – with which he took his earlier shot – is soaked in blood that still seems to be flowing.
Lyons appears a few minutes later with two chicken wraps for the 10-minute car journey back to the apartment.
They’re both eaten by the time we walk through the doors. Lyons changes into his favourite grey shorts and lightweight Nike quarter-zip top.
It’s the same one he was wearing after the ACL surgery that brought a shuddering halt to his upward trajectory.
“It’s not a bone injury but it felt like someone was pulling the bones out of my leg,” he says.
Lyons remembers the date – 27 February 2024 – and everything about the night. He came on at half-time, was marking his former Ireland teammate Ollie O’Neill, and then seven minutes into the second half, his left foot stuck in the ground.
There was a twist and a crunch, a sound he heard only once before when he suffered his first ACL injury just a couple of months after his uncle Johnny passed away.
Now there was the long bus ride home to Blackpool with his leg in a protective brace. He knew, his teammates knew, and the medical staff knew. But no one said anything. The pain and the worry lingered.
Annmarie stayed up until he arrived home at 3am. She sat on their bed checking her phone, scrolling. “Basically just feeling sick,” she says.
He was tired and in pain but they were both still able to cry as they fell asleep together. The next morning it was as if he almost forgot about the night before. Until the pain hit again. He made it as far as the small hall between their bedroom and bathroom before he needed to sit down.
He dragged himself along the floor and sat fully clothed on the toilet. Annmarie heard a thud and came rushing in to see that he had fainted. His lips turned blue. She went into survival mode straight away, dragging him up so his leg had no weight on it and his head could rest beside the shower screen in the bath.
She ran back into their room to phone goalkeeper David Harrington – another of Lyons’ former Ireland teammates, who lives above them – to help as she didn’t want to move him again.
“It was frightening.”
A couple of days later it was almost worse. Lyons, being stubborn, decided he wanted to take a shower and would climb into the bath to have one. By now, his brother Kenneth had come to spend a few days, so when he fainted again, it helped that there was someone else for support.
Lyons broke down again.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
The scans showed damage to his anterior cruciate ligament, medial knee ligament and the meniscus. A tidy-up job on the previously successful surgery in Dublin would also be needed.
He shows the five different scars surrounding the knee and on the kneecap – the patella had to be taken out and repaired with a new ligament as part of the second operation.
“There’s this fucker here, this fucker here, this little fucker here…” he says, pointing to the scars.
They laugh.
Lyons eats his bowl of grapes, yoghurt and peanut butter as he scrolls through his phone to show pictures of the knee at this point.
It’s 11pm but the next hour continues to fly by.
The first surgeon he visited in Manchester said he would require two operations. Lyons wanted a second opinion so threw out a message to Will Smallbone, one of his closest friends in football, for a recommendation after suffering the same injury in January 2021.
“Dr Andy Williams,” was the immediate reply.
A consultation at his London surgery was swiftly arranged and a day later he went under the knife – just the once for a three-hour op.
Annmarie made it down in time as he came around and the “fucking horrible” journey back north to Blackpool at least had a slapstick comedy element.
“It was lashing rain,” Lyons says.
“The journey should only have taken a few hours in the car, but because of rush hour, it was more like seven.”
“And because of your bladder, Andy,” Annmarie teases. “He has the smallest bladder so every time we had to stop, it added on another 30 minutes.
“And it didn’t help that when we went to one services, you nearly kicked my crutches away from under me!”
“It was lashing rain, the ground was slippy.”
They knew when they got home that the next three days would be horrendous. Williams braced them for that and said the third day post-op would be the worst.
“He was right,” Lyons said. “I didn’t know where I was going at that point.”
He couldn’t sleep for the next two weeks. Annmarie organised his pain medication in little bowls and made sure he took them at the correct intervals. She was there for the pain and the tears.
“I wasn’t getting through those days or all of the ones that came after without you,” he says, reaching his hand across the kitchen island to grip her open palm.
“If I was alone, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” he says.
“Thank fucking God I couldn’t find work and was able to be there so,” she says, laughing.
Another of Lyons’ best mates from the Ireland underage set up is Gavin Kilkenny and he visited the apartment with his dog for more moral support.
“It felt like so long before he could have any kind of independence. He was great at putting a smile on and going in to the club to do all his work, but behind that he was in pain,” Annemarie says.
“You were seeing the worst of me,” he says.
“It wasn’t the worst of you, it was just the worst time. Do you remember what you said to me on the bed? You said that in the space of six months, the two biggest fears you had in life came true.”
“Yeah, they did,” he says.
…
It was the small things with his father that he noticed first.
They worried him straight away.
Maurice would forget someone’s name or take longer to respond in conversation. He’d search to remember a word or a phrase when usually he was the one others tried to keep up with.
“He was always so sharp, so quick,” Lyons says. “The smartest person I knew.”
He got in touch with his mother to explain his concerns.
When Maurice’s speech deteriorated and his train of thought was also affected, it was clear that something was wrong.
Scans confirmed a brain tumour in early 2020. Surgery would be required to remove as much of it as possible with radiation needed to shrink whatever remained.
They were told there was a 60-40 chance against surviving the operation and that, regardless, this was an incurable cancer.
“He was given a year to live,” Lyons says. “I didn’t want to believe it, I didn’t want to listen. I was in denial.”
The Covid pandemic brought a whole other element of the scary and surreal to the situation.
Maurice survived the operation and began recovery in the family home in Naas. Lyons was emerging in the Bohs first team at this point, but also returned to be able to spend as much time with his father as possible.
But he still wasn’t processing what was happening.
“He wouldn’t speak about it at all,” Annmarie says. “He’d reply to everything with just, ‘He’s fine, he’s fine’.”
When his mother and father broached the subject in the house, Lyons would simply leave the room and ignore what was being said.
Sometimes he would be angry and sometimes he would cry.
That was partly down to the fact Maurice was responding well to treatment. “He was functioning, he could talk, but I never spoke to him about what he was going through. I totally blanked it from my mind to try and cope.
“I didn’t want to hear the answers or face the reality.”
He kept the seriousness of it all from Annmarie for almost four months before he finally confided in her.
“I kept telling her he was fine when she would ask and you begin to believe it yourself. I needed to open up to you, though.”
He eventually did the same in private with Bohs boss Keith Long and it was only when former Dublin Gaelic footballer Philly McMahon joined the backroom team as a performance coach that he did so with teammates.
McMahon spoke to Lyons about his own father passing away from cancer at the age of 64 in 2018.
He remembers an exercise with the rest of the first team in the centre circle at Dalymount Park. A ball of wool was passed around from player to player with each person asked to pull a string and speak about something they were fearful of in their life.
McMahon had worked with the players to get them to a point where they felt comfortable being vulnerable enough to discuss illness, deaths and miscarriages.
“Even in that moment, I learned so much,” Lyons says. “I broke down in the centre circle and told the lads about Dad.”
He kept that piece of string and would tape it around his wrist in games until it was worn down.
When he moved from Bohs to Rovers, the string followed. He didn’t inform his new club about the situation straight away but soon did – Bradley’s son Josh had also started treatment forleukaemiaa while assistant Glenn Cronin’s daughter Aoife had been diagnosed with a rare, malignant cancer known as soft tissue sarcoma.
Rovers’ former director of football, Stephen McPhail, also underwent successful treatment for a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma during his playing career.
Bradley helped Lyons thrive at left wing-back and when Blackpool made their move halfway through the 2022 Premier Division season, he pushed for the move straight away.
“Stephen knew about my dad and I went to see him alone to explain that I wanted to make this move for him, it was the dream
“Stephen said not to worry, he would make the move happen. There had been disagreements on price, but the next day, the deal was done.
“I couldn’t believe it. So in terms of what Stephen Bradley means to me? I can never thank him enough. Not just because of what he done for my career, but he gave my dad the thing he always wanted in life.”
Lyons responded by agreeing to stay until the end of the season so he could help Rovers win the league for the third season in a row.
“Dad ran on the pitch and hugged Stephen when we did it, that will stay with me forever.”
Annmarie points out the photo resting against the wall of the family celebrating together too, and there was still enough time for memories when they travelled over to watch him sign with Blackpool.
In the days before they played Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup on 17 January 2023, Lyons was told by boss Michael Appleton – including caretakers, he’s had six managers in total at the club – that he would make his full debut.
Maurice was in the grip of one of his chemotherapy weeks, meaning he could barely function. Somehow he made the trip with the rest of the family.
His son scored four times in 17 Championship games during those first six months, but Maurice was nearing the end as the cancer returned and was more aggressive.
For all those days he ignored the truth and tried to hide from it, Lyons at least made it back with the rest of his siblings to be with their father on the day he died – 4 September 2023.
Aileen made sure everyone was home in time, organising flights with Annmarie. The family all sat by his bed and had their own time to say goodbye. “We could tell him how much we loved him, what he meant to us when he was alive, and what he will always mean to us now,” Lyons says.
Looking out of the car window on the way to the funeral, he thought of his uncle Johnny. He saw Keith Long, Paul Osam and Stephen Bradley among the mourners outside the church.
Brian Maher and Brandon Kavanagh, two more of his closest friends, were there. Jack Byrne and Ronan Finn were side by side. Glenn Cronin also turned up.
“It meant the world to me.”
Annmarie, of course, was there, and would be too when they returned to England. When he began his recovery from his ACL, the stress and pressure were intense.
In a cruel coincidence, his sister Heidi was going through the same recovery at home in Naas.
“I was helping as much as I could here but sometimes I just didn’t have the answers,” Annmarie says.
“I wanted to know the answers too, I wanted to try and be able to understand or make sense of what was happening and how I could be there to help.”
It was months after the injury, while also still struggling with grief from Maurice’s passing, that he eventually took Annmarie’s advice and sought counselling. The PFA helped arrange things but he was still trying to hide from the reality, bumping into a friend of Annmarie’s while coming home from a therapy session and lying about where he had been.
“I was constantly crying, I was trying to understand the feelings I had because I’m usually such a positive person. You tell yourself everything happens for a reason and you believe it, but there are also times when you just don’t believe it.”
It’s not far off 1am by this point.
In their spare room, the wardrobe is full of jerseys he has collected during the course of his career to this point.
Blackpool teammate and Northern Ireland goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell brought him back Joshua Kimmich’s Germany shirt from international duty recently.
There’s a Jack Moylan one from Lincoln City while he also boasts a Nottingham Forest shirt from another FA Cup tie that belonged to the on-loan Gonzalo Montiel, scorer of the winning penalty for Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final.
Maurice would have loved that one for his collection.
…
No rest for the wicked, or the injured.
Annmarie is out the door by 7am for her first class of the day, Lyons will be in the pool with teammate Josh Bowler for 10am.
“Do you know what she said to me before she left?
“I hate that you get to stay in bed longer than me.”
He laughs; there’s that smile again.
Of course there is worry now, too, for what comes next with his recovery and what will be waiting after that.
“I feel like I can come back from anything after what we’ve already been through,” he says.
“I don’t have any doubts about that. I think I have shown that I can perform at Championship level, at least.”
But the English Football League can swallow you up. It’s a place where you can get lost in the mire quickly and forgotten about even quicker.
Blackpool know this better than anyone. They are one of nine former Premier League clubs (more than a third of the 24-team division) currently in the third tier, reaching the top flight for a single season in 2010/11 and on a steady decline ever since.
This was typified in very modern terms during a brutal run in the Championship of just one win in 17 games during Mick McCarthy’s ill-fated three-month reign between January and April 2023.
“It can’t go on like this,” a bereft reporter said.
“It can,” McCarthy deadpanned.
The clip went viral, instant meme material that remains shorthand for any struggling club.
“I actually played my best football during that time,” Lyons says. “It’s funny but it’s also not, because it’s not a nice thing to have been part of that.”
Blackpool are fighting for their lives in the third tier, but then, so is every other club in the country given the recent annual survey of club finance directors by accountancy firm BDO found that 90% (nine out of 10) of clubs in the top four divisions are expected to announce pre-tax losses for 2025.
That is the landscape Lyons – and so many others – are part of and fighting to survive in, but for now there is still time to enjoy one last chicken pesto and honey bagel from Reggie’s.
Lyons and Annmarie have another journey to take into Manchester so he can have a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection into the Achilles that will help speed up the healing process and reduce the amount of pain during recovery.
It only takes around 15 minutes but Lyons has an idea of what’s coming.
”A few of the lads have had the same thing. They said it’s torture, absolute agony.”
Lyons then confirms as much after a check up from The 42 on WhatsApp.
“Probably worse,” he says, followed by a string of laughing emojis.
There’s that smile again.
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Andy Lyons League of Ireland LOI Soccer up close