Blues academy coach Steve Foley is back home having spent eight weeks in hospital with pancreatitis.
Foley, who spent much of his playing career at Colchester and also coached at Norwich City, was brought to Town by Jim Magilton as his first-team coach in 2006 and has worked in the academy for a number of years in a variety of roles. The 65-year-old collapsed at his home in Lawford.
"It’s been a rough time," Foley told the Colchester Gazette. "I was very poorly and have lost three stones in weight.
"But I’m back home now after eight weeks in hospital and feel like I’m getting fitter and stronger every day.”
Coincidentally, Blues legend Kevin Beattie, who died on Sunday, was also hospitalised with pancreatitis in March 1991 when he recovered having been read the last rites.
Foley paid tribute to the former England international who he knew well: "Kevin was a year younger than me and coming through the ranks at Ipswich when I was doing the same at Colchester.
"We later worked together and became friends and he was a great bloke and a great player.
"I shudder to think what he’d be worth in today’s market. £100 million maybe? He’d be the most expensive defender in the world and I’ve got no doubt teams would pay silly money for him, because he was priceless.
"The main thing he had going for him was his strength but he was also very quick with the most unbelievable leap. "I always remember playing against him in a testimonial for Roy Massey. We both went up for a high ball. "I’m 6ft so a tall man myself but — and this is no exaggeration — Kevin’s feet were up level with my shoulders. He had a hell of a jump on him and it was an extraordinary talent.” Foley believes Beattie was a player very much along the lines of a modern day centre-half. "We hear so much nowadays about defenders bringing the ball forward out but Kevin was doing that years ago,” he said. "He’d ghost past people, never giving them a sniff, and he was about far more than defending. If I was picking my all-time football team, he would be my first-choice defender.” He added: "He liked a laugh and was just a fantastic man. And the word ‘fantastic’ in that sentence deserves to be in capital letters. "He was unbelievable and had time for everyone. He was a superstar and I was in awe of him, even though he was the most normal, grounded and humble man you could ever wish to meet in your life.”
Foley and Beattie together on Life's a Pitch in 2016
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