SEAN D'ARCY AKA THE FOOTBALL JUGGLER SAYS HI TO THE TOTS

Football is a great game because everyone is equal. The best player in the world can be any shape or any size or anybody. Will it be you who grows up to be the World's Best Player.

Sean

My name is Sean and I was born in Birkenhead , England but I now live Perth , Western Australia .

I was born with a hip condition called Perthes Disease. This stunted the growth of my left leg and by the age of eight began causing a pronounced limp. To rectify this I was in hospital for a year and then on leg calipers for a further two years. Although my legs are now the same length I have been left with restricted movement in my hips and prolonged running is painful. By the time I was nineteen I had to give up playing football entirely as I was causing further damage to my hips.

Obviously my love for football was not diminished just my ability to play the game. As a player one of my strengths was my good ball control and I was always interested in doing football tricks. Inspired myself by a display put on by Argentinian Schoolboys I saw on television during the World Cup in 1978. Almost by accident a few years after giving up playing I discovered that doing tricks was not as painful as playing. Where I lived at the time had no garden so I had to go to the local park to kick a ball. I soon realised that doing tricks is like a magnet. Often I would spend most of the time teaching total strangers how to do football tricks.

Gradually it dawned on me that although many people wanted to learn how to do tricks. There was no way to do this except be shown by another footballer. So my wife and I decided we would document all the tricks we knew and explain how they were done. After much trial and error we developed a system and two years later produced our first video 'Tricks of the Trade' in conjunction with the Perth Glory Soccer Club. As far as I know the first ever football tricks video ever produced.

An unexpected side effect of the release of the video was that I was asked to do trick demonstrations and teach tricks at football camps all over Perth . I did my first ever half time entertainment during a Perth Glory game before a crowd of 18,000 people. From this point I had a real stroke of fortune I was spotted doing a display and I ended up as an official football entertainer at the Olympic Games in Sydney . I performed tricks outside the Sydney Football Stadium for the entire Olympics.

About this time I began to plan that one day I might be able to make this my full time profession. We expanded our horizons and began to look overseas. I have now completed two separate three month contracts with the Football Association of Ireland teaching football tricks at their summer camps and I have performed in England at the Opening of the City of Manchester Stadium . We have completed a second video and have two more in the pipeline.

It was always my dream to be a professional footballer and now through some luck and plenty of hard work I have managed to become involved in football full time which for me is the next best thing. We hope to continue to travel to all parts of the world teaching football tricks. If you would like to enquire about us coming to your part of the world then email us at info@footballtricks.com.