Just how much can one person change?

That was the question I asked myself as I boarded the flight to Roma Ciampino last Saturday morning from London Stansted. I was embarking on a long weekend to see my good friend Phil Mulryne.
For those of you not familiar with the story about Phil, let me enlighten you. He was a former playing colleague of mine from our teenage days in Belfast all the way through to the Premier League, via Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur respectively, before we both went on to win international honours with Northern Ireland.
I can honestly say he was one of the most technically gifted players I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with.
The other side of the coin is that we liked the lifestyle that went along with playing professional football, going to Las Vegas on a regular basis and at times probably abused our position and enjoyed a night out a little too much!
Unfortunately, Phil struggled with injuries towards the end of his career and decided to stop playing and move back to Belfast and try and decide what he’d do with the rest of his days.
To my amazement, and most likely to the rest of the footballing fraternity’s, Phil decided to train to become a Catholic priest!
I was still in contact with him and knew that he had turned his life around and was doing a lot of charitable work and helping the homeless on a weekly basis. Still, it was a complete shock that he felt this was his calling!
I know for a fact that this is not something he took lightly as the training to be ordained as a Catholic priest consists of a 2 year philosophy degree, followed by a 4 year theology degree and only after that will he finally be qualified as a priest!
When I arrived in Rome, I was met by a very contented looking Phil who took me back to the Irish college where he was to based for the next 4 years.
The funniest thing I saw was when Phil didn’t know which way we needed to go and proceeded to blast away in Italian to the conductor on the train. Beforehand, the only words I thought he knew in Italian were pizza, pasta and vino!
The weekend itself was completely mind-blowing in every way from the beautiful sights of Vatican City to the enormity of the Coliseum and the historical beauty of everything in between!
The pinnacle came when I was asked did I want to play 5-a-side with the other priests and much to my surprise was very impressed when, not only did they have a lot of skill and control but were also ‘sticking the boot’ in when needed to! That, I didn’t expect!
All in all, as I left Phil behind to continue his studies for another 4 years in Rome, I couldn’t remember having such good, clean fun with my life-long friend, the future Fr. Philip Mulryne.

Tags: Carrow Road, coliseum, football, Irish Football Association, keynote speaker, Las Vegas, Manchester United, McVeigh and Butler, Media, Motivational speaker, NCFC, Norwich City, paul mcveigh, Phil Mulryne, Premier League, Rome, Sports presenter, Spurs, Vatican City