When the tiny 14-year old Dubliner, Eamonn Collins, first moved to Blackpool, special permission was required to take him out of school, on the promise of a contract. The club shirts were too big for him, so child-sized shirts were obtained and his number sewn on. He was blooded, six weeks short of his 15th birthday, in a Texaco (Anglo-Scottish) Cup-tie v Kilmarnock. Coming on as a second-half substitute he went into the record books – and, the next day, every national newspaper – as

the youngest player to have appeared in a professional match in England.

It would prove to be his only senior game for the club but marked the start of a five-club association with his mentor, Alan Ball. When Ball’s player-manager role at Blackpool didn’t work out and he returned to Southampton, Eamonn, barely 16, followed him.

After three years in the youth team and Reserves, he made his first-team debut in a 1-1 draw with Queens Park Rangers. At the end of that season, he represented Ireland in the World Youth Championship, but he would never start a second Division I match for the Saints.

Dropping down a division, he joined Portsmouth, where Ball had been installed as manager, and played a handful of games in their 1986-87 promotion campaign. After three years at Fratton Park, he was reunited with Ball at Colchester, where Alan was assistant to Jock Wallace.

In 1992, Ball signed him, for a final time, for third-tier Exeter.

A dozen games brought his final League tally to 67 appearances, more than half of them for Colchester. He now went non-league in Devon, gaining his first managerial experience in Tiverton, with Elmore. Returning to Ireland and his original, home-town club, St Patrick’s Athletic, he graduated from player-coach to player-manager, only to join rivals, Shelbourne, as assistant- manager. He left them at the end of 2006 to become a FIFA-registered players’ agent. The last word belongs to Ball, who must have seen the mirror-image of himself in the diminutive midfielder. “I took him everywhere with me,” said Alan in his autobiography. “He never grew but had a shrewd football brain and was always great fun.”  St Patrick’s Athletic was literally Eamonn’s family club. Two brothers played for them and his father, Michael was the chairman. He had played for Tranmere Rovers.

After being assistant manager at Shelbourne, Eamonn became a player’s agent but in 2024 according to the Irish Independent newspaper the FA removed him from its list of registered football agents in the aftermath of allegatiions made about his behaviour as a coach to female footballers in the 1990s in Ireland.