Stockport County helped forward achieve Football League dream with Peterborough United in 2017: View | OneFootball

His stint at Edgeley Park came at a pivotal moment in his career

Danny Lloyd achieved his Football League dream thanks to the belief shown in him by Stockport County in 2017.

It also helped that he managed to bag a hatful of goals in his season with County, before jumping multiple divisions to land with Peterborough United in League One.

Speaking on a recent episode of the I Had Trials Once podcast, Lloyd outlined how former Hatters boss Jim Gannon pulled him back from the brink of an early retirement at 24 years old and set him on the path to a professional career in the game.

Looking back at how his career panned out from that moment, it was a pivotal moment for the winger.

Lloyd’s experience at Fylde saw him come close to quitting

The forward spoke on the podcast of disagreements with then-Fylde boss, and current County manager, Dave Challinor, over his playing time with the Coasters.

Following a difficult 2015/16 season in the National League North personally for Lloyd, with him not getting as many minutes as he believed he deserved, he felt his football career had hit a brick wall.

He netted 15 goals for the club the season before but received fewer starts in the following campaign, so it was an understandably frustrating time.

Lloyd had had enough, deciding with his partner at 24 years old that he was going to step away from the game, focus on his full-time job and possibly just play for fun with his mates on a Sunday.

Just days later, Lloyd’s phone lit up with a call from Gannon, urging him to head to Edgeley Park for a chat.

Gannon convinced Lloyd to give it one more shot

Lloyd describes travelling to Stockport and Gannon walking him onto the pitch, looking up to the Cheadle End and the then-Hatters boss informing the winger that crowds were growing again to three or four thousand.

He was intrigued, but Gannon then took Lloyd into his office, describing how he was going to build the team around him, believing the former Fylde man was capable of scoring 20 goals the next season.

“I had never had a manager speak to me like that in my whole career,”Lloyd told I Had Trials Once.

The offer came through that night, for more than the forward had been on at Fylde, and Lloyd’s mind was made up.

He was giving it one more go.

Stockport move will go down as one of Lloyd’s best-ever decisions

Gannon’s belief that Lloyd could net 20 goals for Stockport would prove to be an inspired projection.

He started all but two of County’s 42 National League North games in the 2016/17 season, notching a spectacular 22 goals in that campaign, according to Transfermarkt.

Across all competitions, he managed 29 goals and assisted 20 more; output that couldn’t, and wasn’t, ignored.

League One’s Peterborough was the destination, on a free transfer, and he seemingly didn’t struggle with the jump in divisions, providing 13 goals and seven assists in the 2017/18 season.

As the Posh so often do, they plucked a promising talent from non-league and gave him the platform to prove himself in the professional game.

Lloyd went on to make 124 Football League appearances, scoring 24 goals and registering 11 assists.

Without the belief shown in Lloyd by Gannon and County, convincing him to give it one final shot, he may never have realised his full potential as a professional footballer and could have missed out on the glittering Football League career he went on to have.