John Edgar is set to play his 148th and final game for Ballinamalard’s first team when they take on Ballyclare Comrades at Ferney Park on Friday evening.

The midfielder joined the club as a four year old and has played and captained at every possible age group on his way through the club ranks, but his first-team career will come to an end this week as he takes a step back from the demands of senior football.

His training time had been curtailed by both work pressure on the farm and family commitments this season, and with another baby on the way in the coming weeks, the 31 year old felt now was the time to re-evaluate.

“Pretty early on in the season I made the decision,” he revealed.

“Even last season there was question marks over whether I could commit to the team. I am realistic and I know you have to be committed to compete at that level and to be able to give something back to the squad. I decided that I wasn’t going to be able to do that, and I didn’t want to feel that I was going to be a drag on the team or just there to make up numbers. The type of player I am I need to be fit and training.”

Friday’s game will mark over a quarter of a century’s service to the club for the 31 year old, who joined the club before he started school.

“I was kicking everything in the house and my mum decided I should go and play football,” he recalled.

“She had heard about Ballinamallard at the time and she got in touch with Gerry Byers. I went down to Archdale Hall and there was a wee under-five team in there. They weren’t even playing outside, and there were only six or seven of us. Then I got moved up an age group. When I was four I was asked to play with the older boys outside.”

From that early start, it was a quick and successful rise through the age groups, with John appreciative of the role his youth coaches played in his success: “Roger Haveron would have coached me through my younger days, along with Mervyn Smyth. They would have taken me through mini-soccer. Mervyn would have moved on and it would mostly have been Roger that coached me at U12s and 13s, and I would have played under Noel Dykes as well. Noel did a lot for me as well during my younger days. John Quinn then would have been my manager at U18 level and Reserves.”

Whitey Anderson gave him his first team debut in the Premier League where he played two games against Linfield and Coleraine before moving to university. That coincided with an 18-month stint at Dergview, but he returned under Harry McConkey to be part of the Irish Cup final squad.

Despite bowing out of senior football this week John is planning on keeping an active interest in the local game, although whether that is with Ballinamallard or another club next season remains undecided.

“I’d like to see Ballinamallard doing well and I would like to contribute in some way in the future, but what form that will take I just don’t know yet,” he admitted.

“I will have to see what the situation is in the summertime. I would like to stay with a club, and stay fit, and stay playing football. I don’t want to commit to anything yet. And I might not play at all.

If there are a 100 cows to calf from September through to December I just don’t know!”