I was living the dream as a professional footballer – now I work on a scrap yard… and I’ve never been happier
ALEXANDER Easdale was living every young man’s dream – playing professional football.
But he sensationally quit the game and for the last 10 months has been working in a scrap yard – and he has never been happier.
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The disillusioned striker with Scottish Championship side Greenock Morton has swapped football boots for steel toe caps.
Instead of enjoying a couple of hours a day pre-season training, he is up at the crack of dawn and working till dusk sorting through scrap metal.
He has swapped coaching sessions for swotting up to pass his HGV licence to drive skip lorries to deliver metal to the company’s three junk yards.
Alexander, 23, who was on Morton’s books for nine years and attracted the attention of a handful of English clubs, says: “I’m a lot happier. I’m really enjoying every day.
“Football is fairly well paid. The lifestyle is good. You train in the morning and then you have got time off in the afternoon to do whatever you want and recover.
“I was full time for almost 10 years in football. I started full-time when I was about 15 or 16 but I just thought, I have achieved what I could at football.
“One day I thought maybe I could go into the scrap business and start at the bottom where my dad and uncle started.”
Alexander’s dad is tycoon Sandy Easdale, who with his brother James, started in the family scrapyard business as boys, going there every night after school.
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Today, in their fifties, the duo are worth £1.4billion after making their fortune in buses, taxis and window manufacturing.
Sandy says: “Scrap is in your blood, you either like it or hate it.”
He and James once travelled to London to buy a Bentley GT first edition from Jack Barclay’s Mayfair showroom, which was in the middle of a renovation.
Sandy, 53, says: “There was a skip outside with some copper in it. I said to James, ‘There’s £30 worth of copper in there, put it in the boot.’
“To the amusement of Jack Barclay’s senior manager we put thirty quid of copper in a two hundred grand car.
“We will walk round London and everybody is looking at the super cars but we’ll be looking at a skip!
“I’d rather have a skip lorry than a Ferrari – they’re the same price.”
Hard graft
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Last October Alexander told his dad he was quitting Morton to become a scrap man working in the family junk yard in Greenock and Renfrew, near Glasgow.
Sandy says: “It’s difficult to go from a Championship club to do a hard day’s graft.
“He left the football club on the Monday and started at the scrap yard the next day.
“At football you get your breakfast, then have a massage followed by a workout, then you get your dinner and watch a movie to recover.
It’s difficult to go from a Championship club to do a hard day’s graft
Sandy Easdale
“Compare that to driving about collecting rubbish. I thought the experience would either make him or break him. But it has obviously made him.
“I told him, ‘Remember the future in football is an easy life compared to the scrapyard, you’re not going to sit in the boardroom,’ and he was fine with that.
“It’s dead easy to say wear a suit and sit in the boardroom and get 100 grand a year and a company car, but he didn’t want that.
“So he’s at the bottom rung of the whole empire. He’s a dogsbody, has no rank through his name.”
‘Down to earth’
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Alexander is learning the business quickly, having already passed his truck and bus test, and has a material handling licence.
“That comes from the football training, having to focus on something and do it well,” Sandy explains.
“He has been there nine months. He loves it. I am proud he has adapted so well.
“He doesn’t miss football at all and has not kicked a ball since.
“In the last ten years, I probably spoke to Alexander for five minutes a day. Conversation over and then he’d go to his room.
“Now he sits, has his dinner and we talk for ages. ‘I did this, I spoke to this person. How do you do this? How do you do that?’
Alexander doesn’t miss football at all and has not kicked a ball since
Sandy Easdale
“He’s in the office dealing with customers and dealing with prices. He’s learned in the last nine months where to buy stuff, how much to sell for, what the profit margins are.
“He has the mental arithmetic that me and James have got.
“It surprises me how he’s adapted. He seems to have picked it up and run with it better than I’d ever have thought.”
Sandy says his son is also helping to modernise the operation, expanding into precious metals and trading in catalytic converters for cars.
“Talking of cars, I have the biggest car collection ever, so Alexander has access to Lamborghinis, Porches and Rolls-Royces,” Sandy says.
“But he’s happy driving a little white VW Caddy van that he goes to work in.
“He’s the most unbelievably down-to-earth boy you’d ever meet in your life.
“On the day he told me, ‘Dad, I’ve had enough,’ I said to him ‘You’re 22, I don’t want you telling me in five years’ time you finished my football career for me.’”
But Alexander has no regrets about turning his back on the world of football.
He says: “There was a lot more pressure in football than in my working life because you are being watched every Saturday.
“Here I’m just a worker, doing the job, 8-5, going out in the lorry picking up scrap, working the skips and the machinery in the yard.
“I feel a lot happier now and I am really enjoying it every day.”
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