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'Inchy' at a glance: Adrian Heath the footballer, singer, Everton legend

February 29, 2020 at 5:51AM

Adrian Heath shows his skills during a Loons practice in September. (Brian Stensaas — Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Adrian Heath

Hometown: Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England.

Age: 59

Teams and games played: Stoke City (95), Everton (226), Espanyol (24), Aston Villa (9), Manchester City (75), Stoke City (6), Burnley (115), Sheffield United (4), Burnley (5).

Teams coached: Burnley, Sheffield United, Coventry City (caretaker), Austin Aztex and Orlando City in the USL, Orlando City and Minnesota United in MLS.

Did you know?

• Heath is one of the main characters featured in the 2019 feature-length documentary "Everton – Howard's Way," which revisits the club's return to greatness in 1980s Liverpool under acclaimed coach Howard Kendall. It's available on Amazon Prime and elsewhere.

• Fuller and his brother attended a game at Everton's Goodison Park where his boss played long ago and wandered into an Everton pub where it quickly became clear they were outsiders and not welcome.

"I remember thinking this could be a bit of trouble, and then I remembered Adrian telling me to mention his name if we got in any trouble," Fuller said. "When I said Adrian Heath was my boss, immediately there were swarms of people. We got Adrian on the phone and the mood instantly changed. It pretty much saved our lives."

• His grown children — daughter Megan, 29, and USL's Miami FC midfielder Harrison, 23 — are both married to soccer players.

• Heath hasn't played professionally since 1997, but he competes with players 40 years younger in post-training games of soccer tennis and soccer horseshoes.

"He still shows off," assistant coach Sean McAuley said. "He still thinks he can play. The mind's there, but I don't think the legs are."

• He played on England's Under-21 team in 1981-82 and was selected to play for the national team. But three days later, he was tackled dangerously in a 1985 game and never got to play for the team.

• He played for famed English managers Howard Kendall, who bought him three different times in his career at Everton and Graham Taylor at Aston Villa. "I like to think I have a little of both in me," Heath said.

• Before the Chicago Bears' "Super Bowl Bowl Shuffle," Heath and Everton players did a 1985 music video "The Boys in Blue," in which Heath applied his singing skills. "I've heard him sing karaoke before," United assistant coach Ian Fuller said. "He's quite good. He loves the sing-song. He knows just about every song ever written from 1950 to 2000."

• High unemployment and a heroin epidemic rocked Liverpool in the 1980s, but it also at the time produced successful musical acts 20 years after it gave the world the Beatles: Echo and the Bunnymen, Flock of Seagulls, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, China Crisis among them.

"It was a great time to be a football player: single, getting well-paid, music going crazy — and I love my music," Heath said. "You could go out on a Tuesday night and see a band play to 30 or 40 people and say, `My God, they're incredible.' And two months later, they're No. 1 in the charts and household names."

Jerry Zgoda