A homeless man has contacted his mother for the first time in a year and a half after he represented his country in a football tournament.
Gerard Bannon, 24, from the Falls Road in Belfast, starred for Northern Ireland in the Homeless World Cup which kicked off earlier this month in front of a capacity crowd in Glasgow.
More than 50 teams took part in the tournament, established to support and inspire through the sport.
Mr Bannon said: "When I became homeless I knew that football helped my mental health issues and control my anger and ever since I have been doing stuff like that and I am representing my country now.
"It has also helped my mum get back into contact with me and know that I have changed.
"This is going to be the first time we have spoken in a year and a half and she has invited me down to see her, down over the border.
"It has helped me get my self-confidence back."
He lives in the Ormeau Centre hostel in Belfast but hopes to get his own flat soon.
Mr Bannon would like to work night shifts in warehouses and has recently gained a forklift truck driving licence.
But for now football is the only thing on his mind.
Up to 100,000 spectators are expected to take in 416 matches over seven days.
Marty Methven, 29, is originally from Perth in Scotland and a former soldier who moved to Belfast for a relationship but found himself homeless.
"It has been hard adjusting to civilian life but I have had no problems getting motivated to get a job."
Brendan Kingsmore, 27, is a former captain of the team turned volunteer coach.
He said: "The boys are absolutely loving it, you can see a change in every single one of them, positive change.
"It is life changing, they are more confident and there is more togetherness.
"Some of them have issues with confidence and interacting with others but everyone has been together and motivating each other.
"It is amazing and great to see, something I thought I would never see."
From last year's team of eight players and one ex-player volunteer coach, seven now have homes and five have full time work.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article