“I hated it. I hated football,” says Josh Galloway with stark honesty on a sunny morning in Carlisle. The former Carlisle United youth player, who faces the Blues with Workington Reds this weekend, is talking about the time when, with Leeds United, he felt all his exciting dreams had fizzled away and he saw no future in the game.
Galloway is in a happier place now, wiser for the experience and rebuilding in part-time football. Yet as he tells his story so maturely and with such candour it is easy to forget that this is still a man of just 22. Even before the interview he had recalled the moment he came home ready to quit the sport he had loved all his young life.
He now returns to it in detail. It was the lowest point of a journey which had known the thrilling high of a transfer to a huge club in his teens, then the pain of gradual rejection.
In the end at Leeds, Galloway – who had held aspirations of becoming a first-team player at Elland Road after leaving Carlisle in 2019 – was either training on his own or helping the club’s under-18 team, even though he was too old to play for them. The future he had imagined was vanishing and the effect of this on his mind was damaging.
“I was going home from training back to my apartment, shutting the curtains, and either watching movies or playing games on my Playstation,” he says. “If I went out, I’d go to the same shops, four times a week, just to keep my mind occupied.
“It got to the point where I asked the fitness coach if I could have a few days off for my birthday – I wasn’t playing, wasn’t in a team, and I just wanted to come home and have a bit of family time. He agreed, and the Friday night is a blur – I just, for one night, tried to turn my mind off football, just enjoy myself with my friends.
“Then Monday came round, and I walked into my mum's work and said, ‘I'm done’. She said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I can't do this any more. I don't want to play football any more. I don't want to be a footballer any more. I want to hang my boots up. I just want to come home’.”
Galloway’s mum urged him to think hard about that decision yet in that hollow moment he felt clear. “I said, ‘Mum, I cannot physically do this anymore. Mentally I'm at rock bottom. I can't just keep going in and being by myself, living by myself and not having that feeling of being wanted by a football club. I've lost the love for it now. It doesn't appeal to me’.”
With the perspective of time, and a better road since that dark day, Galloway reflects with clarity on this period when he suffered depression. He was, at this time, also dealing with the death of his Auntie Jac – a very close family friend who was “my right arm".
“I was heavy-headed, like I just had this constant headache. It was sadness, really,” he says. “I just wanted to be normal, to have a normal life and just be able to just enjoy myself again.
“I was depressed. I knew I was. It wasn't like, ‘What's this thing that’s suddenly come over me?’ I knew full well what it was and I couldn't really do anything about it.”
In the end, Galloway did, and in the process learned more about life, and the harsh world of professional football, than he had ever imagined. His story is worth hearing in full for these and more reasons: a young man unburdening himself, but also motivated by the idea he could help others.
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Galloway, whose father is Mick Galloway, the former Carlisle midfielder, began his football journey with Cotehill and Cumwhinton Crusaders, the junior club Galloway senior set up with his former Blues team-mate, Mark Birch. Their respective sons, Josh and Charlie, were bright young players and close friends.
“I remember sitting in my bedroom one day,” Josh says, “and my dad, who lives in Nottingham, was on the phone to my mum. She said he wanted to speak to me. My dad went, ‘How do you feel about going into training with Carlisle?’
“I didn’t want to sleep that night. I was over the moon.”
Galloway was eight years old and, after trials, signed for United. “I really enjoyed it,” he says of his steps in youth football at Brunton Park. “Being a local lad, it's the dream, isn't it?”
He climbed through the academy ranks and trained with the under-18 team at just 15. Well in advance of the end of his under-16 season, he was offered a youth team scholarship. United were even more convinced of his potential than that of Jarrad Branthwaite, who had to wait longer for the same decision.
He was coached, along the way, by people like Gavin Skelton, Darren Edmondson, Eric Kinder and Birch, whilst looking up to first-team players such as Danny Grainger, Luke Joyce, Nicky Adams, Anthony Gerrard and Adam Collin. A skilful winger, he loved the life of being a youth player so much that even the apparently mundane jobs, such as sweeping changing rooms and cleaning boots, were to be relished. “My dad had always let me know about the things I’d have to do, so it was second nature to me. I enjoyed doing the jobs. I wanted to live up to how my dad had done in his career.”
Come his second YTS year, Galloway, Branthwaite and Taylor Charters were held back from a youth team trip to Budapest, because Steven Pressley, the first team manager, wanted the trio to be involved in the first-team squad during pre-season. Galloway was a substitute for early friendlies, “and then Pressley one afternoon pulled me into his office, and he got me, Harry McKirdy, and Kwame Thomas, who was on trial, and pointed to the right wing position. He went, ‘Are you comfortable playing there?’
“I looked at him in disbelief, thinking it was a wind up. Eventually I said, ‘Yeah…’ And we went out to train and I got put in that position, not realising it was the starting team for Tranmere at home.” Galloway felt he was only being used in preparatory shape work, but was named in the starting XI for the Brunton Park friendly.
“I was like, ‘Wow, he's being serious here’. So we go out and warm up, and my family and my two best mates were in the crowd watching me. It was just surreal. I felt I did quite well, and he [Pressley] pulled me in again and said I’d be playing against Fleetwood as well.”
Galloway performed brightly in the next friendly, linking creatively and confidently with the new signing McKirdy, and at just 17 was emerging in front of supporters as an exciting new face on the United scene. Yet his time at Carlisle was already about to come to an unexpected end.
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Towards the end of his first year of under-18 scholarship, Galloway had engaged the former Manchester United player Danny Webber as his agent. That next pre-season there had been a rumour about interest from Leeds United, but Galloway said he paid little heed to it without any concrete information.
“Then I was in the car one day and David Holdsworth [United’s then director of football] called. He said, ‘Look, we've accepted a bid from Leeds – you won't be needed to come into the club for the next few days, everything's been sorted. I just want to wish you all the best.’ And I was like, ‘Oh… okay…’”
He spoke to Webber and, as discussions were finalised, Galloway was in Carlisle with a friend when his father called, asking if he could travel there and then. “He says, ‘They want you to go to Elland Road, watch the game against Stoke in the Carabao Cup, and sign in the morning’. So my mate, bless him, I just had to leave him in town. I flew home, packed a suitcase with the bare minimum and got ready to go.
“My mum didn’t know. I had to tell her there and then. I didn’t even say goodbye – I couldn’t, she was at work. I told her I was signing for Leeds. Obviously she was over the moon, but there was a part of her that was upset I couldn’t say goodbye properly.”
Galloway stresses he wasn’t forced into the move, and both his dad and agent made it clear that if he did not want to go to Leeds, it was entirely up to him. “At the time I thought, ‘Yeah, let’s do it’.”
He followed Liam McCarron, another teenage Carlisle prospect, to Leeds, and moved into club digs. It was a whirlwind period but Galloway’s dreams, at the outset, sustained him.
“I think I set high expectations of myself. Being so excited about signing, I kind of forgot to think about reality. Being at an established Championship / Premier League club, I thought [youth] international caps would come my way. Having been in the first team at Carlisle, I was a bit naïve. I thought I'd be in the first team at Leeds where that just wasn't the case.
“There, you had Kalvin Phillips, Liam Cooper, Kiko Casilla – a Champions League winner – Helder Costa…there was never a point where I was going to walk into that team and stamp my name down on it. I think my dreams and aspirations took over from reality.
“I should have maybe taken a step back and thought, ‘Don't get too carried away with yourself. This isn't what it's going to be, what you imagine it to be’. And I do think the reality hit me pretty hard at that point.”
The harshest reality did not strike immediately but Galloway’s learning curve at Leeds was dramatic. It was a club being remodelled by the iconic, obsessive Argentine Marcelo Bielsa. “You only have to say his name and ‘legend’ comes to mind,” says Galloway.
“All he thought about was football, and the demands were so high. Whatever he set for that day [at Leeds], everyone underneath followed. So what the first team did, the 23s did and the 18s did. Everyone followed the same structure.
“Your body fat percentage and your weight every day had to be monitored, and your eating…I didn't really eat that bad, but this was a new level. I thought I was pretty fit, but Bielsa was just a fanatic on fitness. And the demands of training…it was such a massive jump.
“It was like being a little fish in a massive, massive ocean. The quality of players was just immense. It was tough to go in there and really get myself up to scratch with the standard and sharpness of everyone else.”
Galloway says he was unable to come home for more than four months and struggled with this aspect, as well as, at 17, adapting to the scale of Leeds as a city. “You think at 17 you’re mature. You’re not – you’re still a baby. It was tough to get used to it all. Because I’d moved so quickly, I didn’t have much with me. I was back from training, in my room, on my phone, that was it.”
He went into Leeds’ under-23s squad with players such as McCarron, Charlie Cresswell, Stuart McKinstry, Robbie Gotts, Alfie McCalmont and Ryan Edmondson. “The lads were great. No-one made feel isolated or anything like that. The staff around the place helped me and fed me into the club. But the football was tough, very tough.
“Everything done in a training session was on an iPad, which you had to watch before you did the drill. To me it was just like algebra, it was crazy. And because Bielsa and his coaching staff didn't speak much English, everything had to be translated through an iPad.
“It was hard to get my head around. I'd just been used to Steven Pressley and Gav Skelton explaining what to do, and then just going out and doing it. But the sessions were brilliant, because they were all different. They all worked on different aspects of your game. It was fascinating just to see how in-depth he [Bielsa] worked as a manager.”
‘Murderball’, Bielsa’s famously intense 11v11 drill was, Galloway says, “carnage”. “I was constantly up against Jack Harrison. You can’t imagine how sharp he was, how quick and fit he was. I’m thinking, ‘How am I ever going to get up to this pace’. But it was a great learning experience.”
Away from the training ground, Galloway also found things challenging, particularly spells when two weeks could pass without a day off. “I know people will say you're living the dream – you only train in the morning, and get away for the afternoon. But being 17 in a new city, I wanted to just come home for a few days and see my family, just to click the reset button and go back again and back to enjoying it. I couldn't do that.”
Because Galloway was born in Scotland, it took time for international clearance to enable him to play. He was glad when he could finally appear for Leeds’ under-23s, but again the demands were high.
“My first game was at Gainsborough, against Sheffield Wednesday. I played right wing-back. Carlos Corberan was our 23s manager and I thought I'd done alright in the first half, but evidently not, because [I was told] it wasn’t the way Bielsa wanted his wing-backs to play. I was arriving to things too early, making runs in behind too late or too early. That's how detailed they were.
“It wasn't like he [Corberan] came in and caned me. It was more a case of explaining that I was new, and I had to get used to what they were doing. I went back out for the second half and stuff wasn't coming off. Crosses in the box, and passes, were a bit slack.
“It was the sharpness of everything, because I'd never really played many teams from Category One [academy] status. It was a shock, and then as the year went on, I dropped back to the under-18s and wasn’t getting many games then either.”
A knee injury offered another setback and Galloway, in his first year at Leeds, rarely felt like he was driving forward. Before his second campaign, he worked hard on his fitness and anticipated a fresh start, with Leeds having been promoted to the Premier League. The club signed players such as Sam Greenwood, Joe Gelhardt, Rodrigo and Raphinha. “So a young lad from Carlisle then gets pushed out of the pecking order…”
Galloway was realistic about the calibre of player Leeds would recruit for top-flight football but it was a blow to start the new campaign not even in the under-23s but the under-18s. “That was a real kick in the teeth. I even got put in the 18s training kit. Eventually I did get back with the 23s, but I think it was clear in Bielsa's head and in the club's head that they'd gone up and forgotten about me a little bit.”
Galloway says it became the case that his name would generally only be listed in the training group, while he found opportunities in the under-23s further squeezed out by first-team players who needed minutes – Rodrigo, Helder Costa, Leif Davis, Pascal Strujik, Mateus Klich, Diego Llorente. “So it was just a running theme, and I was coming to the realisation I wasn’t going to play.”
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After some time in this position, he began to look for exit opportunities. The first thing he did was ask his agent, Webber, to see if a return to Carlisle was possible, yet United, in the difficult Chris Beech-Keith Millen spell of 2021, were not interested. “So we tried a few other clubs and in that period of time I must have gone up and down the country for at least seven months.
“I was at Brentford. I went to Luton. I went to Barnsley. I was at Harrogate. I went to Salford. All just to get an eye in somewhere. And for whatever reason, none of the clubs said they’d take me – apart from Fleetwood.
“I loved my time there. The staff and lads were brilliant. I went in for about two months in total and by the end of it they said, ‘Josh we're offering you a contract’. And I thought, ‘This is my time now. I'm closer to home. It's a great football club’. I was told to go away in the summer, things would get sorted with Leeds and they’d see me next season.’
“I went home, buzzing. Told everyone. And the summer went on and on and on. Then I rang Danny, and he said it had fallen through, because Fleetwood weren't in a financial position to take me. I wasn’t asking for mega money – I’d play for peanuts if I needed to, I just wanted to be back enjoying myself. But Danny explained that they were in an embargo and the players that they wanted to bring in were first-team only. And they were building a dome and they were waiting for the planning permission.
“So the offer had gone. I went back into Leeds a bit embarrassed because I’d said goodbye to everyone.”
Galloway, further deflated, says the subsequent time at Leeds was more remote than ever. He was now in a group of five players asked to train by themselves, if they would not accept the settling of their contracts. “Every day I’d be going in on my own, with a fitness coach.
“Eventually the 18s manager saw this and said, ‘Josh, you can train with us’. So I was an older head, trying to set standards, to get the best out of them. It meant I could be part of a team group again.
“But I’d often be a mannequin still, because they had a game to work for on a Saturday. And when it came to Mondays and Fridays, I was on my own again. It was basically 12 months of pre-season – constant running with a ball, no game time, no team shape, nothing.”
Galloway says this is the time when he would go back to his digs and shut himself away. “Mentally, I was at rock bottom.” He was then devastated to receive phonecalls saying his dear Auntie Jac, whom he had been close to all his life, had taken ill. Leeds allowed him time to visit her before she died. “That was probably the lowest point of my life,” he says.
“In the midst of all of that, I said to myself, ‘I'm done. That's it. I'm going to tell Danny and tell Leeds that I'm not coming back. I don't want to do it anymore.”
He speaks further about the depression he experienced at this time, and what it taught him. “Mental health is a massive thing in football now and it’s something I strongly stand by – it’s okay not to be okay. It's good to speak. Don't bottle it up.
“I did, I bottled it up. I think it was more for my mum's sake. I didn't want to tell her because she worried a lot about me. I'd encourage anyone, going through anything, to speak to people.”
Galloway says he did ultimately open up to his family, and also saw a counsellor. He had done so in childhood after his parents separated, and recognised, through welfare officers at Leeds, that it was an avenue worth seeking. He said this helped him “get things off my chest,” such as the feeling that he was letting people down.
“The [Covid] lockdown was good because I could be at home,” he adds. “Going back really hurt me. I didn't want to leave again. After restrictions were lifted, we were still at home for a bit. In that time, I'm going to be honest, I was going out a lot, near enough every weekend.
“I hate going out now. I don't like drinking. But it was like a release, where I didn’t have to worry about anything. All my worries and stuff just went away. I was with my best mates, socialising, having a few drinks. I wasn’t an alcoholic or recklessly drunk. It was just the enjoyment of taking a deep breath and coming away from everything.
“It was nice. I needed it. But I did notice a theme every weekend.”
Galloway says his closest pals in Carlisle were his “rock” and recognised that he was struggling. “They noticed it early on. They’d ring me randomly, making sure I was alright.”
Depression, he says, left “all sorts of thoughts” swirling through his mind. The main one was, at Leeds, that “I just want to be left alone. I just want to sit in the room and be silent. I just want to be at peace with everything.”
Galloway was convinced that he would have to quit football. “The love of the game was completely gone. I was heartbroken, because football had always been my life. At school, if someone had asked what I was going to do when I left, I’d say, ‘I’ll play football’. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’ ‘Well, it is working out’. It was my only priority. I never thought of anything to back it up.
“To then get to the point at 20 to go, ‘I hate it’…those were the words. I hated it. I hated football.”
Galloway regards it as a “blessing” that, amid this turmoil, a sudden opportunity came. Danny Webber called and said FC United of Manchester, in the Northern Premier League, wanted him on loan. “It was as if my auntie was looking down on me.” Had that move not materialised, Galloway is not sure if he would have played football again.
In the event, “it was a breath of fresh air. They gave me a new lease of life. Filled me with so much confidence. And that football club…I'll be forever grateful for them. The people, the community, the fans were unbelievable.
“I was only there for six months, until the end of the season when my contract at Leeds was due to finish. At rock bottom, it was a step up when I needed it.”
Galloway did not mind the “banter” surrounding a Leeds player’s move to a club established by Manchester United fans. His early performances for FC United were good and supporters warmed to him. “I’d never had my own song before, and the first time I heard it, my mum, stepdad and best mates were in the crowd. I'm not going to repeat it because there's a few explicit words in there, but it felt really good.
“I scored that day, and got man of the match. So everywhere I went playing for them then, the song got sung.”
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FC United was the first positive interlude for Galloway since his Leeds dream had started to unravel. That summer, he left Elland Road for good. “Even if they’d offered, I wouldn’t have extended. I knew it was my time to step away.
“It was a massive learning curve over three years. I learnt a lot about myself, I learnt a lot about the style of a Premier League football club, experiences that I'll take into other football clubs with me – standards, baseline things of what to do. I love Leeds, and I’ve never badmouthed them. It was just how football goes, and I’m thick-skinned and old enough now to know that.
“Driving home from Wetherby to Carlisle was just a massive weight off my shoulders. Coming home was a massive deep breath. It was a great feeling. It was just a sense of pure relief.”
With Leeds now in the past, Galloway could reflect on his decision to move there, as he does now, five years on. “It wasn’t a decision I regret,” he says. “In hindsight I maybe should have stayed at Carlisle a bit longer. I was 17, a baby really, and if I was speaking to my 17-year-old self now I would tell him to really think about the decision, weigh up the pros and cons – yes, have your excitement and ambitions, but also be realistic and speak to lots of people.
“But you can look at it another way – Steven Pressley didn’t stay long at Carlisle, Chris Beech or Keith Millen might have come in and not taken a fancy to me. Maybe I could have stayed and learned my craft a little bit more. But to take the leap and believe in myself…I don't regret that.”
Galloway came home and eventually signed for Annan Athletic in Scottish League Two. It was part-time football buta new opportunity, which set different challenges. To begin with, he admits he was wary of what some people may have thought about his recent fate. “When I came to Annan they put up a photo of me in my Leeds kit. It’s not pressure as such, but I thought people were going to have a certain expectation of me to live up to, coming from a football club like Leeds United.
“If I then didn’t produce those standards, there would be a lot of people having a lot to say. But that’s football. People have their opinions. It was more what my family thought. Had I let them down? Had I let my dad down?”
Galloway admits making the transition from full-time football was not smooth. “I was mentally in a better place, but I probably took advantage of the situation, sleeping in, getting a bit lazy with things, and financially it wasn’t helping either. While I was trying to get my head around that, I had a few arguments with my mum and other people. When I decided to take the plunge and get a job, it helped a lot.”
Galloway started working at the Crown Hotel’s leisure club in Wetheral, where he remains now. This gave him fresh focus. “It’s a lovely place, lovely people, lovely village, lovely staff. All the members ask me how football’s going, but it's nice to go in and have a chat about things other than football. The weird thing is it's actually made me love football more now.”
He spent two seasons at Annan under Peter Murphy and, if he felt a “culture change” leaving full-time football, enjoyed the environment at Annan. “Everyone involved with it, from the kit woman to the chairman, is brilliant. It took me a while to get going and, after a decent pre-season, once the transfer window shut, I didn't really play much. It was frustrating, I thought, ‘Here we go, it's back to how I was at Leeds’. It was a mental battle, to be honest. But I would never sit back and give the team a negative vibe.
“When we were on that push for promotion [in 2022/23], everything was positive. It had to be, because our one goal was to get into League One.” Annan won the play-offs to reach Scotland’s third tier for the first time, and Galloway felt “proud” to be “part of the club’s history.” The following summer, he scored against Carlisle in a pre-season friendly but again found first-team appearances sporadic in the league season. “I decided to go in and speak to Peter Murphy about playing in a different position, because all I want to do at the end of the day is play football.”
It was agreed that Galloway would be tried at right-back, and once he got in the side during the winter, he held down the place as Annan enjoyed a resurgence in the second half of the season to stay up.
“To consistently play and know that when it came to Saturday, I had a real good chance of playing again, was a great feeling,” he says. “I felt it was personally an achievement for myself, because I could have gone into a shell again and packed it in, or said, ‘I can't do this anymore’.
“And it was a real achievement for the team to stay up, and knowing that I played a little part in it. All the lads dug in deep. There was a real strength and mentality.”
Galloway relished being part of a team with such goals again, and being able to look at his struggles from a degree of distance. “I've learned that I'm a lot more resilient than I thought I was,” he says of his post-Leeds time.
“I don't think, mentally, I was strong a good number of years ago. The times recently, and the years I've had outside of professional football, have really built on that side of things.
“The one thing I've taken from it all is, if I ever get back into full-time football, I will never, ever take for granted that feeling again. If I'm going to be brutally honest with myself, from the ages of eight to 21, I may have taken advantage of being a full-time footballer. Being in part-time football, it makes you appreciate it even more when you do play.
“You never know what's around the corner. I might speak for a lot of footballers in that age range. We do take it for granted. It’s our norm, our life, to be in a building every day playing football, the job you love. When you come out of it, it is a reality check.”
This summer Galloway left Annan in order to sign for Workington. Mark Fell, the new Reds manager, had been close to signing him at Lancaster City when Galloway was at Leeds. Fell kept an eye on his journey and, after being appointed at Borough Park, made a strong play for his services. He spoke of his plans for Galloway in the team, and Workington’s promotion aspirations.
“I thought about it long and hard, and felt it would be perfect for me because of the belief he's given me. It’s nice to feel wanted. The fact that Mark really took the time out to constantly message me, just filled me with confidence. From the word go, I felt a real love from him and a real want from him and to take that into a season. It's just made me want to hit the ground running even more.” One fixture in the Northern Premier League Premier Division season will mean more to him than most: when Reds take on FC United. “I can’t wait to see some of those people again. The place means a lot to me.”
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Galloway also wants to talk about some of the people who helped him through his testing times. He mentions his mum, his stepdad, his best mate Aidan – and his girlfriend, Lauren. “I can’t thank her enough,” he says. “Her parents, her whole family, have been like sponges. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d said, ‘Give us a break eh, Josh’. But they’ve been the most supportive family ever.”
Lauren is the granddaughter of both the legendary Carlisle striker Billy Rafferty, and the great United chairman Andrew Jenkins, who passed away last week. Galloway has benefited from their wisdom, their football and life experiences. “Billy’s a legend. He always asks me how I’m doing, giving me advice. Even if it’s not about football, I can ask him things and he’ll offload his thoughts.”
Andrew Jenkins, he says, was “such a wonderful, wonderful man” and whose death has left him “heartbroken”. “Not only was he an inspiration, for Carlisle United, for the city, for the people that he worked with, his family idolised him,” Galloway says. “My heart goes out to them all.
“It was such a privilege to know him on a personal note. He was a joy to be around, always laughing, joking. It wasn't long ago that I was fixing his Wifi for him, bless him, because he was trying to watch Sky Sports and the router had gone off. We were just having a good laugh while I was sorting it out.
“He was a true gentleman. The service he’s given Carlisle United, the amount of games he’s been to, is scary. I was really pleased that he got to live out one of his dreams of Carlisle being promoted at Wembley [in 2023]. I was sat down near the dugout and he was up in the Royal Box with all the family. As soon as that winning penalty went in, I just turned around and looked up at him and the joy on his face was priceless.
“I wish I could have got a photo of it because it was something beautiful to see. He was just so, so happy. His club, the love that he has for the club, in a stadium like that, achieving League One status. I think that was his dream right there.”
Galloway's own dreams are being rehabilitated, while he admits there will be “a lot of emotion” when he comes up against Carlisle this weekend. When he did so for Annan a year ago, “I’m not going to lie – it was nerve-wracking”. Against players he had known from his time in United’s academy, and against coaches such as Skelton whom he regarded as a “second dad” in football, he opened the scoring.
“It was a surreal moment. I want to say I manifested it because, the night before, I was speaking with my best mate and the family and said, ‘Imagine if I manage to get a goal’. And it happened – I got on the back side of Jack [Ellis], and still to this day I don't know how I got underneath [goalkeeper] Tomas Holy with the size of him.
“I put it through his legs, but I never thought about celebrating because my respect and love for Carlisle United is still massive. I love the club. If we didn't have a game last season, I was always at the ground watching them.”
When he’s at Brunton Park, does Galloway allow himself to think, ‘what if’?
“Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Myself, my mum, the family, my girlfriend and her family are massive believers that everything happens for a reason. So there was a reason why I went to Leeds, and there was a reason why it may not have worked out.
“But every time I went and watched Carlisle I thought, ‘That could be me playing now – things could have been different’. I'm not going to sit here and lie and say I don’t wish I was back there. It would be a dream to play for Carlisle, because to be there from eight to 17 was an absolute joy. If I ever got the chance to go back, I would snap someone's hand off.”
Galloway, right now, hopes Workington will be a positive step that helps him carve a new future in football. “I've really got the bit between my teeth to get back into full-time football. That is the aim. How long that's going to take, I don't know.
“What happened is an experience that could have made me never want to go back into it again, but it's really thickened my skin. Now, if anything gets thrown at me, footballing-wise – rejection, or not playing, or even worse – I can deal with it a lot better now. And I feel like the support and structure that I've got around me is even more important than my own mental side.
“So I feel like I'm in a very good place now. And I'm really looking forward to the journey.”
Galloway does not simply want this to be about him. He sees a wider benefit in sharing his story, particularly the hardest aspects of it. “Any lads my age, or younger, in football that are going through similar, I want to be someone that they can feel that they can relate to,” he says.
“Before, I’d only keep it to myself, or just certain people I’d want to tell. But now…I think it's something that I need to say. I'm comfortable with people knowing it. There's no embarrassment or shame about speaking about it. If it does help anyone, then brilliant. And if anyone wanted to contact me, or sit down and have a chat about their experiences, I want to be that person that can listen.
“Truly, you never know what's going on behind closed doors. Someone on the outside might be the bubbliest and brightest person in the world, always cracking jokes. But when they go behind those four walls, it could be a completely different story.
“The old saying is true – never judge a book by its cover. You just never know what people are going through.”
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