Drew Rea, an american college player from california (a centre back) has signed as an amateur for my local club glentoran. http://www.glentoran.net/mrport01sec.htm Glentoran are the present irish league champions (northern ireland) and would play a level of football similar to english 2nd division (the old fourth division), despite being part-time players. If this guy is any good there is a chance he could get a game, as the 2 regular centre backs from last seasons league winning team (chris walker and paul leeman) are out for the rest of the season and our current centre backs are the injury prone former man utd and northern ireland international pat mcgibbon and a young 19 year old in his first season. Glentoran are famous for being the club which produced danny blanchflower, billy bingham and also famously turned down a young george best for being too small ! (best was a glentoran fan as a youngster). This season the irish republics champions, shelbourne, beat glentoran in the first round of the european cup. I would guess from this guys surname that he has family links to northern-ireland, Rea is a scots-irish name.
Thanks for the tip as always! A little information about Drew. I believe he graduated from Cal St.-Bakersfield, where he was a standout player (a defender) in his conference, this spring. He was listed as being from Redlands, Calif., and having originally attended Western Michigan. He was a second-team D2 all-American for the 2003 season -- not sure about 2004.
Well, Drew didn't stick at Glentoran -- got hurt during the trial just as things were going well. However, we might have some more news about him soon and will update as soon as I can confirm.
I wonder if he grew up in Redlands. There's another pretty good player from there who's about the same age...