As he sat at home watching Sky Sports News on January 31, 2011, David Edgar’s phone rang. He was informed that Swansea wanted to sign him on a loan deal from Burnley until the end of the season.
“I was told I needed to get to Turf Moor. I saw it as a great opportunity,” Edgar tells The Athletic from his home in Ontario.
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It was a move that suited Edgar perfectly. It had been just over two weeks since Eddie Howe had been appointed Burnley’s new manager after Brian Laws was sacked and the new boss had made it clear to Edgar that he wasn’t in his current plans.
Managed by Brendan Rodgers, Swansea were pushing for promotion to the Premier League. Edgar had spent the end of the 2009-10 season on loan there under Paulo Sousa, so it was familiar surroundings. Edgar was excited to get started with the added incentive of a possible permanent transfer if it went well.
“The paperwork got done just in time so I shot off to Swansea the following morning,” says Edgar. “I was told that the paperwork hadn’t been completed for the game that weekend so I missed that.”
Swansea were beaten by Cardiff that weekend, then Edgar began training with his new team-mates. But the wait continued. He missed the following game against Middlesbrough a week later as doubts started creeping in. He was called into Rodgers’ office; FIFA had refused to grant international clearance.
“He told me that there had been a problem with the paperwork and the deal didn’t go through,” says Edgar. “I was gutted.
“Then you have the whole mental battle because you have to pack up all your things again and drive back to Burnley. Then, you have to switch your mentality and try to get into this team that had said you weren’t good enough in the first place.”
Howe welcomed his player back into the fold with the message to keep working hard. By the end of the season, Swansea achieved promotion to the Premier League.
“It was a clerical error,” he says. “There was one decimal point in the wrong place and that’s why it all fell through.”
Three years later, Edgar would be part of his own Championship promotion celebration with Burnley.
In the summer of 2009, Edgar, at the time 22, was at a crossroads. Newcastle had been relegated to the Championship and he was out of contract.
He was playing a waiting game after being offered a new contract to see who Newcastle would appoint as their permanent manager. Chris Hughton was caretaker manager but Edgar was hoping Alan Shearer would take charge. Meanwhile, Burnley were showing plenty of interest.
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“I travelled up to Burnley and spoke to Owen Coyle,” he says. “We played a bit of head tennis and I signed on the same day. I made the decision to make the move and try to play regularly.
“Newcastle couldn’t give answers. We didn’t have a permanent manager; I don’t think Chris Hughton found out I had signed for Burnley until it was on Sky Sports News. It was a tough decision leaving but I don’t regret it.”
It brought an end to an eight-year spell with the club he supports. Edgar came from a family of Geordies who had moved out to Canada before he was born. Having always wanted to be a footballer, he had trials at Celtic and Rangers before Newcastle offered him a scholarship aged 14 on the condition he lived permanently England. It was a big decision to move away from friends and family but Edgar’s determination was clear.
Initially, he lived with his nan, who had remained in England and he began to progress through the youth and reserve teams.
With Newcastle dealing with an extensive injury list in December 2006, he made his first-team debut against Bolton. That was followed by his home debut against Manchester United. His assignment? Mark Cristiano Ronaldo. (“Yes, that was something.”)
The game finished 2-2. Edgar scored, Ronaldo didn’t.
During his three seasons around the first team, Edgar was training with top-level players. He singles out Kieron Dyer and Nolberto Solano as two exceptional talents. “Nolberto, footballing wise, was frightening good,” says Edgar. “He loved a bottle of Corona beer and he played the trumpet. All he could play at the time was Pink Panther so he used to play it out the window at the training ground.”
Despite the quality in Newcastle’s squad, the 2008-09 season saw them suffer relegation.
“I could see how much it hurt Alan Shearer,” says Edgar. “It hurt me and the likes of Andy Carroll, but did it hurt enough people? Only they can answer that, but I know who it did hurt. I just didn’t think it would happen.”
“If you look back at my career, it was only a matter of time before Coyley went. My uncle and my dad still say no matter where I go, my manager is in for it.”
In January 2010, midway through the Premier League season, Coyle made the shock move to join Bolton. Edgar had seen this story before.
At Newcastle, he worked under six permanent managers: Glenn Roeder, Sam Allardyce, Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear, Hughton, and Shearer. By the time he left Burnley, he had worked under four more.
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Edgar settled quickly into a welcoming Burnley dressing room when he arrived. But on the pitch, it was a difficult opening six months. The first-team football he signed on for did not arrive. He played just once, in a Carling Cup win over Hartlepool in August.
“Coming from the tension at Newcastle, you come into Burnley and the banter was hilarious,” says Edgar. “Coyley created that environment and atmosphere.
“I genuinely thought I would play more. Owen was extremely superstitious and he didn’t like a lot of change in his team, which was understandable. He would walk around on a Friday and tell the lads who weren’t playing the same thing: ‘Keep your head down and keep working’.”
Laws was appointed as his successor on January 13, 2010, and although Edgar saw it as a clean slate and a chance to impress his new manager, problems began to arise at the club. The dressing room that had been so fun and close-knit under Coyle wasn’t the same as Laws struggled to maintain control.
“It affected a lot of players in the dressing room a lot more than it affected me and the newer signings because we only had a short time with Owen,” says Edgar. “The lads who had been part of the promotion-winning season felt let down that Owen left.
“Coyley let the older players manage the dressing room. Everyone knew what we were doing every day in training so there was stability. With Laws it was different, the dressing room was full of older players and, potentially, he struggled with that.”
Despite starting in Laws’ first game in charge — a 3-0 defeat to Manchester United — Edgar soon found himself on the outside looking in again. He requested the opportunity to go out on loan and joined Swansea for the first time in March 2010, playing five times and scoring once.
Edgar’s turning point at Burnley came in the final game of the 2010-11 season in just his 14th appearance for the club. After his second Swansea loan had broken down, Edgar had played just one minute under Howe (as an 89th-minute substitute against Crystal Palace in March).
He was given a start against Cardiff and was man of the match.
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“Eddie told me before we left for the off-season that this was my chance,” says Edgar. “He said to go away and get myself ready to go because he wanted me to be part of the spine of the team.”
Howe lived up to his promise and Edgar played 49 times during the 2011-12 season at centre-back. He enjoyed playing under Howe whose footballing philosophy suited Edgar and he believes it was an important learning curve, finally playing consistent football.
Yet by October 2012 of the following season, Edgar was playing under his fourth manager in as many seasons.
“I had a lot of time for Eddie,” says Edgar. “He was quiet, not a ranter or a raver unless required. We had a young squad and he was definitely building something, but we were inconsistent. He was able to implement an identity and you can see he has done the same at Bournemouth.”
That brought Sean Dyche to the club and a new culture which Edgar bought into straight away. “Shinpads on, no headphones… yes, he changed things,” says Edgar with a chuckle.
Edgar says Dyche was the first manager who got him thinking about management. He is currently taking his coaching badges in Canada. When it is possible, he hopes to fly over to the UK to complete badges here as well. He launched David Edgar Football Coaching recently to support young Canadian footballers and provide professional experience for them to learn from.
Despite not being a regular under Dyche, Edgar was a reliable utility player who made 27 league appearances during the 2012-13 season, then 17 during the 2013-14 season.
The 2013-14 season remains a fond memory. Despite losing their top goalscorer Charlie Austin, Burnley did the unthinkable in Dyche’s first full season. Tipped to go down, they finished second to achieve promotion to the Premier League.
There was a key moment during the season that stands out for Edgar, proving the importance and influence of the culture Dyche had built.
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“I think it was Ashley Barnes. He had just signed from Brighton for a decent bit of money. I remember Tuesday was running day and he moaned about something and he was still relatively new. Dychey just had a pop at him.
“I will always remember Dychey telling him, ‘Get the fuck back on that line and you run’. That was it. Look at Barnesy now, he bought in and has been brilliant. That was a big moment. It just reaffirmed that it didn’t matter who you were, you couldn’t carry an ego.”
The promotion-sealing victory over Wigan in 2014 is a day that Edgar will never forget and one he shared with a “special” group of players. The post-season celebration in Marbella was extended by Edgar to include his stag do.
Edgar admits he would have liked to have experienced the Premier League the following season but after an honest chat with Dyche, his manager laid out that he would struggle for game time.
“I loved my five years there,” he says. “At that point, it was probably the right time to move on but I was gutted, devastated to be leaving the training ground for the final time.”
Edgar’s career took a mighty twist in December 2016 when he was hit by a car during a golfing trip in Arizona.
“You could drive golf buggies on the road, which I thought was weird,” says Edgar. “We turned left and I somehow tumbled out. As I am getting up, I remember my last thought was headlights coming right at me.”
Instinctively, Edgar jumped as he was hit by an SUV which was travelling at around 25mph. He flew backwards, protecting his head but hitting his hip hard on the ground. He immediately got up and ran towards his friends’ voices and out of the road.
“When I think back, I have no idea how I ran,” says Edgar. “I was still in shock and I went to place my foot down afterwards to take a step and I just collapsed. My right leg was like a piece of spaghetti. I knew instantly there was a big problem.”
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Edgar was taken straight to hospital for scans and found he had torn his MCL, PCL and meniscus in his right knee.
“It was extreme pain,” says Edgar. The identity of the driver was never discovered. “It was so difficult knowing that I would be out for a long time.”
The following 16 months contained the toughest mental challenges of Edgar’s life. He was playing for the Vancouver Whitecaps in MLS at the time after spells at Birmingham City, Huddersfield Town and Sheffield United.
Despite the severity of the injury, Edgar maintained the attitude he had throughout his career — head down and work hard. The thought of his career being over didn’t enter his mind.
“You don’t think that type of thing is ever going to happen to you,” says Edgar. “All I wanted to ask the surgeon was, ‘Can I play again?’ I was told that athletes had come back from it before, so he told me it was a possibility. I didn’t listen to the ‘possibility’ bit. I just thought that if I did as I was told, I would get back.
“It is extremely mentally challenging. You get to a stage where you think you are near the end of your rehab, so you sit down with the specialists, who then tell you that you are nowhere near the end. They told me I was lucky to be kicking a ball.”
When Edgar finally recovered, with the help of the Whitecaps medical staff, he returned to pre-season training to try to earn another contract. Unfortunately, the team had no room left in their salary cap to sign him.
Edgar began to bounce around from team to team, signing for Nashville SC in April 2018 and then Ottawa Fury four months later before an opportunity came up at Sunderland.
He travelled back over to the north-east of England but during a two-week trial, he only trained with the first team twice. “Something didn’t add up from the moment I got there,” he says.
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But Edgar had missed England. He signed for Hartlepool United in the National League to play out the remainder of the 2018-19 campaign. It was the club his father, Eddie, had most enjoyed playing for during his own career in the 1970s.
However, a pulled hamstring in the final game of the season ruled him out of selection for the 2019 Gold Cup with Canada and once he had regained fitness, the opportunity arrived to play for Forge in the inaugural season of the Canadian Premier League. He signed for them in August 2019, free of injury.
Success soon followed in the shape of the CPL title but, due to the coronavirus, the 2020 season has been delayed. Edgar and his team-mates had been in the early part of their pre-season at the beginning of April but at the end of May, they were still waiting for the green light to being phase one of training.
“I’m very happy at Forge,” he says. “It’s a 45-minute drive from my home. It was a no-brainer to sign for them and I’m looking forward to the 2020 season.”
(Photo: Nigel French/PA Images via Getty Images)
