Lewis Hardcastle was living the dream and captain in the Football League aged 22 but it changed overnight
Lewis Hardcastle was 22, playing professional football and captaining Barrow on their return to the Football League – living his boyhood dream.
But in 2021, it would come crashing down when he was told that he had to retire due to a heart condition.
In a side room at the Heart and Chest Hospital, in Liverpool, Hardcastle was alone when he was told that his heart was the worst that the doctor had seen in 23 years.
With aspirations of enjoying a long career, he was suddenly an ex-professional footballer, with nothing to fall back on, stranded without a contingency plan.
However, five excruciating years later, following positive tests and scans with his consultant, he was given the all-clear to lace up his boots once again.
“It was a bit emotional,” says the 27-year-old, who made his return to competitive football in the Liverpool Senior Cup for Warrington Rylands against Pilkington at the end of October.
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“It was a bit mad. I started getting dizzy and light-headed in games, I remember Southend away, in the 90th-minute, I went down on my knees then after 10 seconds it’d pass,” says Hardcastle, now 27.
But the problem persisted for another six or seven matches and for longer periods in those encounters. The root of the “episodes” was initially ruled as an ear infection before further tests uncovered something far more sinister.
In the midst of COVID and all the restrictions, Hardcastle broke the news to his family over the phone and he was forced to remain isolated in Liverpool, seeing his loved ones through a hospital window.
“It was a dark time, a really dark time,” he says. “All the tests came back, my heart was a mess, which never came to my mind at all.”
Some six months earlier, Hardcastle was in the heart of midfield as Barrow earned promotion back to the Football League following a vote from the National League, after the league was suspended with the Bluebirds four points clear.
David Dunn replaced Ian Evatt shortly after, and Dunn, who knew Hardcastle from his time at Rovers, gave him the armband after impressing.
“It was the fittest I’d been. I was flying. I was really enjoying my football and it all just went downhill from there,” the 27-year-old says.
“When you hear that, where do you go from there? I just broke down in tears,” he says, with the emotions still flooding back five years on.
“You never think it’s going to happen to you, you see Fabrice Muamba, Daley Blind, Christian Eriksen (who all collapsed on the pitch due to heart conditions) but you never think it’ll be you so you never plan for life after football.”
After months of “sulking”, he had to take his first steps into the world away from football. Traffic management, working as an apprentice and a personal trainer were just some of the trades that Hardcastle tried his hand at but ultimately didn’t like.
He eventually found something he loved in coaching.
From one-to-one sessions to mini-camps for children, he soon cut his teeth in the world of semi-professional football at the likes of Rylands and Macclesfield, earning respect and a name for himself as a highly-rated coach, before returning to Rylands alongside Neil Reynolds as his assistant manager.
In the dugout, alongside the former Bamber Bridge and FC United of Manchester boss Reynolds, Rylands have taken a surprise lead at the top of the Northern Premier League table, step seven of the English pyramid.
Hardcastle is loving his time on the side of the pitch but there is one key thing that is missing: the buzz of playing.
There were conversations with the heart consultant before tests and scans were scheduled, revealing improvement over the last five years.
“I said to him, ‘I can’t keep doing what I’m doing’. I love coaching but I needed that buzz back in my life. Just getting my boots back on at three o’clock and at some point be involved in a game,” he says.
At the end of October, he got the buzz back against North West Counties Premier Division side, of step nine, Pilkington, with a 30-minute cameo and coming on alongside his older brother.
“When I was getting ready at Pilkington and putting my boots on, you never actually think it’s going to happen. He [Neil Reynolds] just said, ‘are you ready?’ And that’s when I started to get emotional,” he says.
With the buzz and the highs, there are doubts in the back of his mind and whether the issues will return.
“You’re always thinking the worst when you’re doing a recovery run or a sprint,” he says. If his condition worsens, Hardcastle acknowledges that he will hang up the boots.
But there are no ambitious plans to move back into professional football, Hardcastle is set on helping where he can on and off the pitch, taking it slow, as Rylands look to earn promotion to the National League North, which would be the club’s highest ever position in the English pyramid.
And after the lowest of lows, Hardcastle is at the end of the tunnel where the light is shining bright.
“I’m better now, really positive, now I can get my boots on and help the lads. I’ve got a little boy now, he was two in September, life is really good, it’s the happiest I’ve been in however long,” he says.
