Three years ago, Conrad Logan made the tough decision to retire from professional football after a glittering 15-year career.
The Irish goalkeeper spent over a decade at Leicester City, where he witnessed the Foxes fall from the Premier League to the third tier, before climbing all the way back up to the top flight in 2013/14. It was a remarkable journey for Logan, who also donned the likes of Hibernian, Mansfield Town, and Rotherham United before hanging up his boots in November 2020.
Unlike many ex-professionals like Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Mikel Arteta who have gone straight into coaching and management, Logan chose to go down a different route. Instead, the 36-year-old decided to drop down to the ninth tier of English football with United Counties League Premier Division side Anstey Nomads.
Alongside his part-time playing duties, Logan is the Director of Football at the Leicestershire non-league side and balances the two while also running his own goalkeeping academy. Logan's role at Nomads includes dealing with recruitment, players' wages and running the football club on a day-to-day basis.
"It has been fantastic, I was fortunate enough to be able to make a decision myself that I wanted to do this," Logan told MirrorFootball. "It wasn't for the sake of falling out of love with the game as such. We were in lockdown, I was coming up to 35, I was setting up my own goalkeeping academy and I was involved in coaching.
"I then had a discussion with my family and decided that I didn’t really want to continue in the professional game travelling all over the country.
"The people at Anstey Nomads asked me to come on board as the Director of Football, which I was going to do initially without playing, and then I decided why not, let’s keep playing. I wanted to try and help the boys and grow the club.
"A lot of people when they finish playing usually go into coaching into the pro-game, and I had options when I finished to slide into the pro-game as goalkeeper coach. It’s completely different training with the players you play with but putting life into perspective, we were all brought up playing in small villages like this, so I wanted to give back what I started with."
It is safe to say that Logan is thoroughly enjoying his role at Anstey as the club prepares for the biggest game in its 76-year history. The Nomads take on National League giants Chesterfield in the Fourth Qualifying Round of the FA Cup in front of the BBC cameras on Saturday.
Anstey have already had to beat five teams to get to this stage of the competition - and are just one win away from potentially being drawn against Derby County or Sheffield Wednesday. Unlike most of the members of the Anstey squad, who have never reached this round of the FA Cup before, Logan has played in some more high-profile matches.
None more so than in the Scottish Cup final in 2016 in front of over 50,000 fans as his Hibernian side beat Rangers 3-2 at Hampden Park. But reaching this stage of the FA Cup for a club like Anstey is as special of an achievement for Logan, who has "pride" in the Nomads' FA Cup run.
He added: "It’s a different sort of achievement. As a player, I’ve been fortunate to win the Scottish Cup, win promotion to League One with Stockport, win promotion from the Championship with Leicester with good players - they were all great experiences.
"But this is completely different, I’m not just a player that’s in a team now, it’s more than that. I am running a club and helping them do that. I remember when we were at Hampden Park and beat Rangers with over 52,000 fans, people flooded the pitch after the game - it was unbelievable and crazy.
"But compare that to a couple of hundred people that jumped over the fence when we won 5-0, and you know every one of them personally. They haven’t seen a small village club and the scales are obviously very big, and it’s a different feeling.
"I have played in the FA Cup before at a higher stage than this, but I have more pride in what we have achieved now because it’s unheard of. A Step 5 team going this far in the tournament playing against a team that faced Chelsea last year in the FA Cup. It is a different sort of feeling for myself, personally, but something we’re really proud of."
During his time at Leicester, Logan was second-choice to Kasper Schmeichel for four years, and also played behind Tim Flowers and Ian Walker - all three have had lasting impressions on the Premier League. However, the Irishman sacrificed playing first-team game time to learn under some of the best goalkeepers in the game.
Schmeichel, who won the Premier League with Leicester in 2016, has clocked over 200 Premier League appearances and will go down as a Foxes legend. However, Logan has revealed that his close friends asked him why he didn't go and play football rather than sitting on the bench.
When asked whether he has any regrets, Logan said: “No, I have been very fortunate to do what I have done. I have played 300-odd games and won trophies and been at clubs with great players.
"I was at Leicester for four years behind Kasper Schmeichel. A lot of people ask me why are you number two to him? Why don’t you go and play football? But I have no regrets in my career.
"It’s been fantastic and some of these experiences have helped me progress for life after football. Tim Flowers and Ian Walker were my first two goalkeepers I trained with every day, as a 15-year-old kid it was unbelievable."
