"REALLY ill" for several days before the recent London Marathon, Lee Mudd didn't even consider not starting it, never mind not finishing it.
Having battled back from a serious internal injuries and a bad leg break at the age of nine, put in a coma after being knocked down by a motorbike, he clearly has enormous resilience himself.
Yet the motivation to run the 26-plus miles to raise funds for Kidney Research UK was done in memory of his late father David; in some strange way Lee actually wanted to suffer, as his dad had done in his too-short life.
His dad's dedication – and his sudden, shocking death – has inspired Lee Mudd in his career too, to become a football agent for the world-leading CAA Base, based in Belfast city centre.
Having been a promising young footballer himself, although only recently turned 41, he has become a 'father figure' for more promising young footballers from Northern Ireland.
The landscape has changed greatly since Lee left Glengormley – and Glentoran FC - for Stockport County as a 16-year-old, but all his experiences have combined to make him a caring confidant, not the avaricious agent of popular perception.
The loss of his dad, when Lee was just 21, had an enormous impact on him; initially negative, then positive, inspirational.
His own agent at the time had secured him a place at a trial game at Lyon in France, as Mudd tried to kick-start his senior career – and he did well on the same pitch as a World Cup and Euros winner.
"I went over, played like an exhibition game: [Christophe] Dugarry was playing, Marc-Vivien Foe. I've done well, I felt the higher, the better the level, more time on the ball, it suited me, I'd done really well.
"But at the end of the week, pretty much my dad was critical. My mum rang and said, Look, your dad's going into hospital.'
"He went in for a routine operation, he always had kidney problems but went in for a routine operation and just complication after complication with the operation, he ended up with a punctured lung and he declined and he got MRSA, at the time it was round the hospitals.
"He just really declined, she rang and said 'look, he's not in a good way'. I came back and within days he passed away.
"I'd have been 21."
The pain remains in his voice 20 years on.
Working through the pain
His dad had always suffered ill-health but Lee never expected to lose him at that age.
"My dad lost a kidney very young and then always had complications with the other kidney. I just knew my dad always being ill.
"He was a painter and decorator. Always got up and went to work. I remember dad throwing up in the mornings before he went out to work in a physical job. My dad would just work and be sick.
"He never missed a game, he was at every single one of my games growing up.
"He used to joke with us, 'Remember this, because I'll not be I'll be around' and we always used to laugh it off.
"He had a colostomy bag, went into to get a urostomy bag fitted – look, it was negligence from the hospital at the time but we didn't want to challenge it, it was all so raw.
"He was only 47, I was 21 He would have been a big, big part of my football because a lot of what I've done was with him in mind. I've always wanted to make him proud, like most kids do."
The effect on Lee was devastating. "When I lost him, I questioned everything - Why am I even bothering? I was always fighting in football to get that next thing, to make him proud.
"When I lost my dad there was six months I think I didn't even touch a football, I had no interest. I was getting calls about opportunities, 'Do you want to go on trial…?'
"I just didn't want to know, couldn't even contemplate football at that time. He was only 47, he was very young."
Looking back, he realises now he was depressed then, but, as he says "It wasn't a 'thing' then, mental health, was it? It was just like, 'I need to get on with this'.
"If I'd have seen somebody I would guarantee they would have said you were [depressed], 100%.
"At 21, there's no good time to lose a parent, but you're at an age where you're needing guidance and you're becoming a man and you're looking for that support in terms of becoming a man and what's right to do, what's not; you look to your parents at those ages.
Feeling lost
"Football was the last thing, I couldn't even couldn't even contemplate playing. Just going through grief I suppose at that point.
"I remember feeling just lost, you're just completely lost - you don't know where to turn….Ultimately you want to stay in the game, you don't know who to speak to you, …as a person I just felt lost.
"All your life you've got football and everyone knows you for football, that's your 'thing'. All of a sudden 'I don't know what I am'."
Trying to make it as a professional footballer has always been tough, especially for a lad away from home.
A ball-playing midfielder, who represented County Antrim at the Milk Cup, he was picked up by Stockport County. His first flight over aged 15 was the first time he'd been on a plane.
Stockport were then in the second tier of English football, but Lee thought his chance had gone when he pulled a hamstring on the first day of the trial. However, manager Gary Megson told him to stay around.
"All week I thought 'I'm not getting anything'… I'll never forget ringing my mum and dad and saying 'I've got the offer'."
That was a rarer feat then than now, and also far less lucrative and much tougher.
School of hard knocks
This was the late Nineties, but it may as well have still been the Fifties.
Trainees were poorly paid dogsbodies. "First year, I was on Gary Megson's and Mike Phelan's boots, couldn't have picked two worse people – they had to be polished, dubbin out on to soften the leather, you were going down shaking – they'd have checked the bottom, made sure there was no dirt on them.
"Some things went on which wouldn't happen now – clothes soaked in the shower, your initiation to sing a song, usually naked, or they covered you in black boot polish.
"A Really tough environment. No mobile phones, no social media, only contact with mum and dad was once a week from a phone box.
"You're finished training at two, but then all the equipment had to be put away from the first team training and then you're back to the ground and did other jobs. I was on the home dressing room, had to clean the baths and showers, then the groundsman would check all your jobs before anyone could go home.
"You weren't home to eight at night, into a box room in digs.
"First year, I cried myself to sleep pretty much… Would I let my kids do it? Probably not, but it's an opportunity. It makes you who you are."
Having mucked in then, Mudd has mixed feelings about the improvements he and other agents have helped achieve for youngsters:
"It has probably gone too far the other way, almost too soft. It's a balancing act. You have to build character."
Yet he accepts there were downsides: "First year, I was so homesick it affected everything I was doing. It was so competitive, 27 players fighting for three pro contracts. Nowadays a lot of lads get two years scholar, two years pro, a guaranteed four years.
"Then, everyone was on YTS [Youth Training Scheme], £86 a fortnight.
"Now, do they work as hard? I don't know. They're wrapped in cotton wool, but maybe you're creating a bit of a monster.
"I liked the old YTS, you had to earn the right, get the acceptance of group."
In his second year he earned a spot in Stockport's reserves, and recalls playing Newcastle, who had a few first teamers involved "John Barnes in centre mid, so strong, couldn't get near him, Philippe Albert. In the FA Youth Cup, he played against Joe Cole and Michael Carrick in a brilliant West Ham side.
Still, he couldn't make the senior breakthrough, and moved onto Bolton Wanderers. There, though, Sam Allardyce didn't give youth much of a chance, and Lee moved on to Brighton.
Half a world away
But the move that really changed his life came after his dad's death, and took him half a world away - eventually.
"I just thought I'd get back on the ladder. In those days agents would have done deals for you, done your contract and make sure everything's right, but they weren't as prevalent in terms of connections and helping you get back on your feet.
"I remember ringing around, cold-calling - at the PFA I spoke to Martin Buchan and he came back within a day and said there's a club in New Zealand. Bobby Gould's over there managing.
"I thought 'New Zealand? No chance' You're always thinking I'm gonna get something better, I'll be able to play at a better level, I need to stay at a better level
"Nothing was coming up and I think after two weeks I rang them back. So I spoke to them and away I went.
"Hawke's Bay on the East Coast. Wine country. It was beautiful. Football wasn't massive there but it was the top league in that country and it's a national league. We used to fly to all our games."
Yet his love of playing had dimmed: "That was probably the first time where I realised 'I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to play with the same level of passion, desire I had before.' I just didn't have it.
"I think I was always wanting the acceptance of my parents, wanting to make them happy, to make them proud. I love football, I still loved the game, but it just didn't have the same level of desire for it.
"Over there it was amazing, amazing way of life, a brilliant life experience. But in terms of football, I think I realised probably I'm not going to get to where I need to get to in terms of the level."
Part of his deal was to coach kids in the Hawke's Bay Academy, headed by Bobby Gould's son, goalkeeper Jonathan, and Lee started doing coaching badges in his early 20s.
"But I knew I wasn't going to be a coach, or a manager. I liked the thought of helping players in some way but not managing or coaching, wasn't for me. The younger players you get a lot out of, that age group."
Talent scout
Mudd moved back home "knocked about the Irish League a bit, had spells at clubs, Crusaders and Ards, never settled. The Irish League was different then, no full-time clubs, just training Tuesday, Thursday.
"I started working, had to get a job, became a global planner for a logistics company while I was still playing."
In his mid-30s he started scouting for Brentford, but found rejection of his prospects a trying process: "When the club said 'no,' you've already got an attachment to the player, got to know their families, but you've got to break that chain and move on.
"I started scouting for [Crystal] Palace as their Head of Recruitment here, but that was very similar, it was very difficult to get lads into that club at that time.
"I got approached by a small family agency called Achieve to do their recruitment in NI and got my teeth into the agency side of things.
"I felt able to open up any door to any club, not just working for one club where if they say 'No', then you've got to say to that player 'No thanks'. So I started doing that for them and got a wee bit of success - Jordan Stewart would have been the first one went across from Glentoran."
Next Lee was head-hunted by New Era, with whom Rio Ferdinand is involved, who wanted someone in Ireland.
Agent for good
He insists he was set no targets, explaining "The whole thought process at New Era was to put down a marker in Ireland as a whole, help the best players as much as we can.
"Agents, and the stigma that goes with being an agent is so far from what the job is. People literally just see people turn up and the player moves and they're obviously representing the player and do the deal, but there's so much work goes into everything, helping behind the scenes.
"When I went across [to Stockport] there was no support network. Now young lads are leaving Northern Ireland and they need as much support as they can get. One per cent of players make it. For you to do that, you need as much support as you can get."
The loneliness he experienced as a teenage contender was hard: "In those days you didn't have budget airlines, it was all BA [British Airways]. So then, for my mum and dad to pay to fly over it was maybe twice a year.
"When they did come to watch your performances were always top with them in the crowd. In those days it just wasn't as easily accessible, and even coming home was costly.
"Nowadays lads have in their contracts to get maybe in eight, 10 flights a year for themselves and usually have got a kitty for their family to use as and when they want to fly back and forward, it's so easy.
"Back then you got back at Christmas but most of the time you were just on your own. It was a military existence: go to training, finish training, go 'home' – that was with an elderly woman, in a box room, there's no TV in the room.
"Going through what I went through, in the early days of being away from home… my parents were amazing but maybe that next link to be able to feed into someone and say 'Look I'm having a bad day' or 'This happened in training' to someone who gets it."
The approach then was 'make or break', Lee confirms: "100 per cent. And a lot of people it broke, even people that lived around the Manchester area, two or three just couldn't do it, and they were going home to their families every night. When I think back, I don't know how I actually got through some of that."
The desire to make his parents proud drove him on.
So did the memory of his dad, making even doing the London Marathon while unwell a feat he could achieve.
"It sounds ridiculous, but my dad always suffered, all his life, he was always in pain. You get a buzz from completing it, there's only a small percentage of the population have actually ever completed a marathon.
"For me to keep his memory alive, in my mind, I'm keeping his name alive and keeping his memory alive. And we're gonna raise money for the charity. The pain you have, you're almost suffering the way I saw my da suffer, I felt the need to do that to some extent."
