A World Cup, hit musicals, winning trebles and playing with George Best: Derry City legend Felix Healy has done it all!

The ex-Northern Ireland international has played at the 1982 World Cup Finals, marked George Best, won a unique domestic treble with Derry City and a cherished league title as a manager of his hometown club.

And during an insightful interview, the Brandywell native recounts his most memorable moments both on the pitch and on stage. Surprisingly, he makes the admission that his singing career was much more than a release from the pressures on the pitch.

In fact Healy claims he always saw himself as ‘a singer who played football, rather than a footballer who sang’.

Despite having worked under Billy Bingham and Bertie Peacock, he ranks Jim McLaughlin as the best manager he’s ever played for and Liam Coyle and Norman Whiteside as the best players he’s ever played with.

Felix, who also starred in hit musicals ‘Grease’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ also explains how he trained with the Ireland women’s No. 1 tennis table player in a parish hall in Kilrea back in the 80s.

And for Derry City fans, we find out who Felix reckons would win a match between the famous ‘89ers and his 1997 league title winners!

What’s your favourite memory on the pitch?

“Playing in Pat Jennings’ testimonial at Windsor Park (1986/87). I was playing wide right and there was a fella called George Best playing wide left. I walked into the home dressing room at Windsor and George was sitting on the couch in the middle of the room. He got up off the couch and came over and said ‘Felix, how you doing, I’m George’, and I nearly died. I couldn’t believe he knew who I was.

“Kevin Keegan knocked the ball back to Liam Brady and the first thing they did was give it to George. He tried to nutmeg me and we both had a laugh. It was brilliant and we had a good bit of craic during the game. That was an amazing experience.”

What was it like to play at the World Cup in 1982?

"When you go to something like that, because you weren’t involved in the qualifying, you almost felt like you didn’t belong. These guys got to the World Cup and then all of a sudden you’re brought into the squad.

“I was a bit lucky because I knew I was going to play at some stage because ‘Bingy’ (Billy Bingham) told me before a ball was kicked. He basically had his team picked and said there’s only one position left and it’s between you and Norman Whiteside.

"Now, Norman was playing for Man United and I was playing for Coleraine, so there was no prize for guessing who was going to win that battle. But I was always going to play. In the first game against Yugoslavia I warmed up so many times I probably ran more than in some of the matches I played. With Northern Ireland it was always based on having 11 men behind the ball and try and hit on the break. ‘Bingy’ used to park buses before Jose Mourinho knew what a bus was.

“When I did come on against Honduras it was just unreal. It’s hard to put into words that you’re out on the pitch in a World Cup game. Five or six weeks earlier I was playing against Ards and Cliftonville and all of a sudden you’re playing against Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and against World class players.

“I played against Trevor Francis in his last match before he went to Italy and you’re saying ‘How did this happen?’ But I didn’t have any qualms playing in that team.”

What was your biggest achievement in football?

“Without doubt, it was winning the league with Derry (‘97). I built that team. We should’ve won the league in ‘95. Everybody talks about how unlucky we were in Athlone that year. I took over at Derry and I think we were sixth in the league and we should’ve won the league.

“We won the FAI Cup (1995) and when the final whistle went it was one of the few times in football when I was punching the air. I got emotional when we won that after everything that went on at Athlone. It was relief.

“The following year, I studied the Bosman ruling and I felt it was going to come in. Luckily I was proved right because around February I had already signed two or three players for the following year.

"We played Shamrock Rovers at the RDS one day, I met James Keddy in the hotel before that match. I met Gavin Dykes a couple of times in the Abbey Hotel in Donegal Town. I was putting things together and trying to build a team.

"The year we won the league the team picked itself. The four guys across the middle, (Tom) Mohan, (James) Keddy, (Paul) Hegarty and (Peter) Hutton, I wouldn’t have liked playing against that four.

“When it finally happened (won the league) and all the celebrations were going on, I was looking around and there was a woman, the late Sally McKeever and her husband Charlie, who used to go everywhere, the length and breath of Ireland and you saw what it meant to people.

“While the presentation was being made I was standing on the dog track along with Pat Dolan. I’m looking up at the house where I grew up. There were so many things which happened at Brandywell which came flooding back. That’s where I’m from and my father was alive at the time, I’m just sorry my mother wasn’t alive to see it. It was just one of those things I will never forget.”

How did you lift the team for the FAI Cup final that year following the death of Tony O’Dowd’s brother?

“With Tony’s brother dying a couple of weeks later, it was an absolute nightmare. It just put things into perspective. It was horrendous. The furthest thing from my mind was winning a cup final.

“Travelling down on the Saturday it was very muted for a team which had just won the league. James Keddy took me to Tony’s mother and father’s house and I spent a couple of hours with them.

"It was a horrible experience but I’ve been through that myself, losing my brother and young sister. I know how that impacted my mother and father. On the day it was a horrible match. Damien Richardson and I did a radio piece and he said we were duty bound to entertain the public but he made no attempt to play that day. We lost 2-0. One was a set-piece and the other was a bad back-pass by Gavin (Dykes).”

Who was the best manager you ever worked under?

“Jim (McLaughlin) by a country mile! Jim (inset) was part of the Liverpool set-up for 20 years. Jim could’ve managed at the highest level. He had incredible knowledge of the game which he didn’t like to share with people. One of his great sayings was, ‘Would you ever stop educating people?’ It took me a long time to realise what he was talking about.”

Which was the best Derry City team you played for or managed?

“The treble team was a super side. The criticism we got for playing negative football was hard to believe. It was nonsense. The Dublin press were writing on a weekly basis that we were bad for the league because we were too good.

"Thirteen games in we averaged four and a half goals a match. We were good enough to string 10 or 12 passes together. Having said that, the team I won the league with - I wouldn’t have fancied playing against them. Everybody talks about the current Liverpool team pressing high but we did that in 1997.”

Who would win between the ‘89ers and the ‘97 league winning team?

“For a laugh, I would say myself and ‘Dooler’ (Paul Doolin) might have the edge over ‘Heggsy’ and Hutton. That would be a battle. If you wanted to go into the trenches ‘Dooler’ was another one you’d take. He won six or seven championships and there’s a very good reason for that.”

Which opposition player did you hate playing against?

“One of the great Leeds players was Paul Reaney. My first away match for Port Vale in England was against Bradford City. We beat them 3-2 and I scored a bullet from 30 yards and made the other two. Leicester City came in the following day for a bid of £50,000 for me.

"We drew Leeds in the FA Cup and Paul Reaney did a man marking job on me and I never got a kick at it. But guys who had great engines, like cross country runners, they would never stop and give you a minute.

“When I was playing for Coleraine I used to have a man-marker every week. In the treble years, Turlough O’Connor and Brian Kerr in the Dublin press would say, ‘If you stop Healy, you stop Derry’. Kerr used to put a guy ‘Trapper’ (John Treacy) who played for Pat’s on me. When we played Dundalk they would stick a fella Tom McNulty on me. You got used to it.”

Who was the best player you ever played with?

“The two most talented players I ever played with were Norman Whiteside and Liam Coyle. Mal Donaghy was an incredible talent too. He was known as the Rolls Royce, he was a fantastic footballer and incredible athlete. In terms of ability Norman and Liam were incredible and great to play with.

"Playing with Liam, he could see what you wanted the minute you had the ball. He had the same picture you had and there’s not too many like that. The only thing that stopped Norman becoming a world superstar was pace.

What was the best goal you ever scored?

“The goal I scored against Linfield in the Irish Cup final in ‘82 at the Oval. The ball was played up to me at the halfway line and I spun the centre half. I ran basically 40 yards before I smacked the ball into the net.

"The adrenaline rush was amazing. We beat Linfield at Coleraine 2-0 on Boxing Day and I hit one on the volley from 30 yards and it flew in the back of the net and I’ll never forget it. That was special against the Blues.”

Any regrets?

“The only regret I had, which is easy in hindsight, is I should’ve gone to Luton, who were in the First Division at the time, after the World Cup. I walked out of Port Vale and they held my registration. Bertie Peacock phoned me and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wasn’t bothered and to just leave it. If I had wanted to do I could’ve just walked out and I probably should’ve gone. But everyone has regrets.”

A lesser known fact about yourself?

“I was the north west table-tennis champion four years in a row. I never lost a match. The guy who taught me was John Faulkner who was Derry No. 1 at the time. I used to go to the parish hall in Kilrea and train with the Ireland women No. 1 and No. 2, Beverley and Myra Stewart.”

Singing or football?

“I’ve been singing for 47 years now. I would have to say I enjoyed singing more. I lived and breathed football from I was five until I was about 13. Then I changed completely. I was never the same afterwards in relation to football.

"That love and hunger for the game never came back. That’s probably behind some of the decisions I made which a lot were family based. I would say I’m a singer that plays football rather than a footballer that sang.

“I’ve been singing in bands since 1971. I was playing for Sligo at 19 and I was dashing back from Limerick to play with the band in Bundoran. With Coleraine we always seemed to play the Blues on Boxing Day and the boys in the band would pick me up in the van after the game and we would drive to do a gig in Belfast.

"It was one of the few releases. Even when I was managing at Coleraine and at Derry I was gigging away. I always wanted to win the league as a manager and player of Derry and I did both. But there are more important things than football.”

Have you a standout funny moment from football days?

“One of the funniest things I remember seeing was when I just signed for Sligo. There were about five or six Derry players there. It wasn’t like nowadays. Back then you were wearing the kit from two or three years ago.

"I had big legs and had problems getting the socks up over my calves. But Seamus McDowell - the great ‘Shakes’ - was playing and he was running up the pitch and his shorts were so short that, let’s say, everything was on display. It was priceless.”

Would you ever consider going back into management?

“No! I think there’s a serious issue in football nowadays. Society has changed dramatically as well. There are less and less people playing. People spend more time on their phones, the internet, social media and everything else.

"I was great friends with Bertie Peacock and Jim McLaughlin - two different guys in many ways but both would say to me the game is about players and they’re destroying players nowadays with too much information. It’s ‘paralysis by analysis’ as Martin O’Neill put it to me recently.

“As Jim (McLaughlin) would say, ‘If you have to write it down it couldn’t be important’.