Big Interview: Luke Varney ‘I Feared I Was Finished But Now I'm Having Fun'

LUKE Varney is an easy target for opposition fans these days. “I’ve got a receding hairline and I’m pretty old, so yeah,” laughs the Cheltenham Town striker, “I do get a bit of banter!”

- Chris Dunlavy

At 37, however, he is just grateful to be getting stick at all. Released by Burton Albion in the summer of 2018, Varney spent four months out of work.

Marooned in front of Soccer Saturday, he increasingly feared the curtain had tumbled on a career spanning 15 years and ten clubs.

“A lot of managers said they wanted to sign me,” recalls the former Leeds, Ipswich, and Blackburn forward, who also made 30 Premier League appearances for Blackpool. “Then it got to chairman level, and they were all worried about my age.

“When that happens in July, you think ‘Okay, plenty of time yet.

“By August and September, you’re watching the results come in and thinking ‘This might be the end of the road’. Most mornings, all I could do was go for a run and hope the phone rang.”

When it finally did, the man on the other end was Michael Duff recently installed as the manager of Cheltenham.

Just four years older than Varney, Duff had spent over a decade in Burnley’s back four and was a regular foe in the Championship.

“He’s combative like me and we had some good tear-ups over the years,” says Varney. “The first thing he said when I met him was that I’d given him a shiner the last time we played.

“But we got on great and chatting to him was dead refreshing. He was not long finished and very current in his ideas. I signed for him on my 36th birthday.”

A year on, Varney says, it has proved one of the best moves of his career.

The goals are flowing. The wins stacking up. Better yet, though, is a sense of purpose and belonging that he rarely felt in grander surroundings.