Leith's Danny Swanson reflects on his time with Hearts and Hibs as he looks ahead to life after football

Born with a heart-defect, luckily detected when he was a baby - his mum noticed his lips turning blue one day and took him to hospital - there was worse news to come as he entered his teenage years.

“It was always Hibs and as a kid, it was football all the time, every day,” says Danny when we meet in a city centre hotel.

He continues, “About 30 of us would play every night on the Astroturf at Victoria Park until the lights went out.

“Then we’d head down the road, get our jam sandwiches for tea, go to bed and head back the next day to do it all again.”

At the time, Danny was unaware of the risk he was taking, however, the peril was brought home in a post-check-up phone call from the Sick Kids Hospital.

“My mum told me I had to go and see Dr Burns, who was looking after me,” he recalls.

“When I got to the hospital, dad was outside in the car. mum said he was ‘a bit upset’ and when I asked why, she said ‘I don’t think it’s good news’.”

Dr Burns told the young Danny he needed another operation - a big one.

“I remember saying, ‘But I feel fine’, and he said, ‘In the next couple of years, you won’t even be able to walk 10 yards without getting out of breath.

“It was then I got told it was very unlikely I’d ever be able to play sport.”

Just 13 at the time, Danny underwent a heart-bypass operation. He has, he says, “been fine ever since.”

Now 32, and looking ahead to life after the beautiful game (“I have two or three years left in me”), the father of two has a very definite, if perhaps unexpected future plans in place.

“When I turned professional, I had a plan,” he reveals.

“I would move to England when I was 25, I actually turned down Hibs at that time, going to Peterborough instead, and thought, ‘When I’m 30, I’ll go back to Hibs’.

“And that’s how it ended up happening.”

His career has seen Danny play for seven teams: Berwick Rangers (2005-8), Dundee United (2008-12), where he was part of their Scottish Cup winning team, Peterborough United (2012-14), Coventry City (2014-15), St Johnstone (2015/2016-17/2018-present), Hearts (2015-16) and his beloved Hibs (2017-18).

He says, “It didn’t quite work out as I’d wanted at Hibs, but when you get to a year left in your contract and you’re past 30, people start thinking, ‘Can he still play to the same level he used to?’ So when I went back to St Johnstone I thought, ‘This isn’t going to last forever,’ I need to think about something else that I’m interested in to do.

Consequently, he has become a founder of Best FA, a new company connecting people with Financial Advisors.

If that seems a giant leap from the sport in which he has made his name, it was his early experiences as a player that gave him the idea.

“Best FA, which is best-financial-advisor.com, is something of which I am really proud.

“When I was at Dundee United, I found I was getting decent money, much more than I thought I would be earning, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

“Without any help, I probably wasted quite a bit of it.

“When I moved to England, I spoke to a couple of financial advisors, they really helped me, but when I came back to Scotland, the same help wasn’t really there for footballers, and not just footballers, but for your average Joe as well.

“I wanted to start something to help people and we’ve done that.”

Danny is quick to stress that he is not a Financial Advisor himself.

He explains, “We work with Financial Advisors and recommend the best one for your circumstances, whether that be investment advice, mortgage advice or whatever.

“It’s about finding someone you can trust, that’s high on my priorities because I’ve had experiences in the past where people I thought I could trust let me down.

“I’d hate to see that happen to someone else.”

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Danny insists that when the time comes to hang up his boots, he wants to make a fairly clean break from professional football.

“I would still like to be involved at a local level, perhaps coaching kids up to the age of 13 or 14, seeing them develop as players.”

Danny himself played in two youth teams as a boy, Hutchison Vale and Leith Athletic.

“My two managers as a kid were Stevie Adamson and Keith Summers, I still speak to them even now, they worked so hard for nothing really.

“That’s what I’d like to do, because when you get a player like myself who goes on to play professional football, that’s job done and that must be such a great feeling.”

Danny sons, Roman (4) and Oakley (3), are already “football mad” he reveals, but what if they want to follow in dad’s footsteps when they are older?

“I probably wouldn’t advise them to go for a career in football,” he admits, “there are too many downs, but they love it.”

He laughs, as he adds, “I’ve even tried to get them into golf but they’re just really focused on football, can’t think why, but then it is the best job in the world.”

Winning the Scottish Cup with Dundee United aside (“I don’t remember much about it... it was a big celebration. I never knew there were so many people in Dundee,” he laughs), another highlight of his career was getting called up for the Scotland squad he says.

“Even though I didn’t play, just being around those players, being called up for your country, that was massive, and I know how much my dad loved that.”

One move that might have come as a surprise to those who knew him came four years ago when the died-in-the-wool Hibee signed for Heart of Midlothian.

“I had tried to get to into Hibs before I went to Hearts but Alan Stubbs was like, ‘We have all our players’,” he recalls.

“Then my agent phoned to say that Craig Levein would like to take me for Hearts.

“I’ve always got on with Craig, he did really well for me at Dundee, so it wasn’t a huge decision.

“Hibs and Hearts are both big clubs so I was always going to go, but I was thinking, ‘How are the fans going to take this?’

“When I told my dad, he just laughed and when I signed, he put all the Hearts’ tunes on in Swanny’s, his mad Hibs’ pub, to wind up the locals.”

Danny concedes he found his time at Tynecastle difficult.

“I found it really hard at Hearts. Shortly after I signed for them, I was on a night out in a nightclub in town when two Hibs’ fans came up to me and proper abused me.

“I thought, ‘Wow!’ I was a bit taken aback by that.”

He adds, “Apart from that, I’ve never really had any abuse as such and, at the end of the day, it is just a game.”

His dream of playing for Hibs finally came true in 2017.

“It wasn’t until I did the photo-shoot at Easter Road that I believed it was actually happening,” he admits.

“One of the biggest things for me while I was at Easter Road came when Hibs played Hearts and there was a minute of applause held for Shaun [Woodburn] - both sets of fans were brilliant. They were all chanting his name. That was just amazing.”

If pulling on the green jersey was the pinnacle of the Leither’s ambition, the loss of his best friend Shaun, who was killed that Hogmanay, made it painful period of his life.

“Hibs was pure pressure,” he reflects. “After what happened to Shaun, football became an inconvenience and there was the added pressure of all your mates being there to watch you. I just fell out of love with the game.

“I didn’t care about keeping fit, I was lethargic, didn’t enjoy training. I realise now I was grieving.

“I’d never experienced grief before, never had to deal with loosing someone like that... Shaun was a best mate, we used to go to all the Hibs games together and it all just came to a head - I found it really difficult to concentrate on the football.”

Now enjoying a third stint at St Johnstone, Danny says he has rediscovered his passion for the sport.

He smiles, “There’s no pressure now and when you’re playing your best football, that’s when you’re at you happiest.”