Richard Lee: Heroics under the lights and sleepless nights | OneFootball

Even though Brentford lost 5-0 to Fulham in Kevin O’Connor’s testimonial in July 2010, the occasion gave Bees fans the rare chance to enjoy a west London derby and celebrate one of the club’s greatest ever servants.

It was their first glimpse of new goalkeeper Richard Lee, too. He had been signed as the new no.1 after Wojciech Szczęsny returned to Arsenal following a loan spell that feels like a fever dream over 15 years later.

Even though it was just a friendly, it turned out to be a pivotal game in Lee’s Brentford career.

“I hadn't played consistently for so long before that,” he explains. “Normally it's a non-league team in your first pre-season game and you're quite comfortable, but my first game was against Fulham and I do remember being really, really nervous.

“I took it seriously. I arrived early at one of the local hotels, had a nap in the afternoon. I really wanted it to go well and it just didn't. There was a bad mistake for one goal in particular.

“I didn’t get off to the best start with the fans, which was a disappointment, but I could also sense the manager [Andy Scott], pretty much as of that moment, was a little bit more negative towards me. For the rest of pre-season, I didn't really get much of an opportunity.

“I remember wondering if I’d made a mistake. I could have stayed at Watford; it was comfortable, I built a really good reputation there with the fans and, realistically, I probably could have stayed there for a long, long time.”

Simon Moore started the 2010/11 season opener against Carlisle, Alex McCarthy – signed on loan from Reading – played the next three League One games against Walsall, Swindon and Rochdale, before 2008/09 promotion winner Ben Hamer returned on loan, taking the no.1 shirt for the 10 games thereafter.

“During that time, I was studying a lot about the psychological side and figuring out what I needed to do to get myself back in this team. You always need a little bit of luck, and I think the luck I had was that I was given the cup games.

“I made a real point of doing as much as I possibly could in training, making sure I was in the best possible place for those games and taking them as seriously as I could.

"Thankfully, after that initial disappointment, game after game, it was going my way and I could sense that the momentum started to build.”

Lee made his debut in a 2-1 win over Hull in the Carling Cup on 24 August 2010, kept a clean sheet in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy first-round victory over Stevenage, then started in goal when Premier League side Everton came to Griffin Park for the first time since October 1953.

Séamus Coleman put the Toffees in front early on, but Charlie MacDonald struck to take the game to extra-time and penalties.

And, like the near-9,000 crowd inside the ground that night, Lee will never forget what happened in that shoot-out.

“In the game itself, I remember making a save from Mikel Arteta up in the top corner and another one down low to my right, another one on one. It must have been seven or eight saves that I made," he recalls.

“Then you get to the penalty shoot-out and I did have the awareness that, if we win this, this is one of those games people will talk about.

“I remember the first one going in, being gutted and telling myself I needed to make a save. When I did make that save from Jermaine Beckford… there’s nothing like that buzz. For a goalkeeper, there's very rarely moments where you get the opportunity to be the hero for the night.

“When Phil Jagielka hit the post, seeing the fans stream on, it’s the biggest high that you can get. I'd never had it before and never had it since.

“For all the games that I played at Watford and the games I played in the Premier League, that is still probably my favourite night.”

That was the first of an astonishing five penalty shoot-outs that season inside just three months, of which Brentford won four.

Against Charlton in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, Lee saved three, but nothing came close in comparison.

The cup games served their intended purpose and, combined with a twist of fate, helped him reclaim the no.1 shirt for good.

“My relationship with Andy Scott wasn’t good, " Lee admits. "It's a shame because, when I first met him, we got on well and I thought I'd really enjoy working under him. But I felt early on that he wasn't really having me, or we got off on the wrong foot in terms of my performances.

“I had previous managers, like Brendan Rodgers, Gianluca Vialli, Ray Lewington, where I felt I built good relationships with them and they were constantly keeping me in the loop. It was a different style of management with him; he was a little bit more stand-offish.

“The bit I'll always give him credit for is that he did give me that opportunity against Bournemouth, which he didn't have to. Ben was due to play that game and it wasn't his fault; he was late because of a crash on the motorway.”

Lee seized his chance and started all bar one of the next 23 league games, as well as keeping his place in the team for the run to the JPT final.

But a true rollercoaster of a season – his “most enjoyable” and one that ended with the Supporters’ Player of the Year award - came to a premature conclusion when he suffered a dislocated shoulder in the 2-1 win over Leyton Orient in March 2011.

“It was a killer," says Lee. "I never got to play at Wembley – it felt like the football gods weren’t with me on that one.”

He recovered to start the next season as Uwe Rösler’s first-choice goalkeeper and, while 2011/12 didn’t have quite as many high moments as the year prior, Lee was given the regular football he had craved when he joined the club a year earlier.

He played 42 times in all competitions – a career high – and kept 15 clean sheets as Brentford finished ninth in League One. But again, his season finished early due to injury.

“Towards the end of that season is when I probably first started to feel a bit of a decline,” he says.

“I always wanted to train hard, I always wanted to try and max out what I could do in the gym, improve my power and strength. But I realised that, as I started to do that, I kept getting these niggles.

“I very rarely felt 100 per cent and it impacted my confidence. I felt I needed to be close to that to put on a display that would have been good enough for Brentford at that time.

“That was probably the first time it hit me a bit psychologically, where I was going into games and having to take so many painkillers.

“Then I started to get the shoulder issues, which got worse and worse. For an older goalkeeper, you do your shoulder, it's so hard to get it anywhere near what it was.

“Once I'd done that, I just couldn't come back. I could never get back to the level I was at for those first two years.

“It almost worked for me in a weird way in that I was a no.2 and when I did step in, I think I did okay, because I wasn't having to play regularly and my training got tapered quite a bit."

In 2012/13, he was second choice behind Simon Moore, but still kept four clean sheets in the six games he did play. And in the promotion season of 2013/14, he was back-up to David Button, playing five times in all competitions.

“That season, if I knew I had a game, just knowing I couldn't get myself physically to where I wanted to get myself… I really struggled with insomnia," he says.

“We won the Coventry game 2-0 and I literally did not sleep a minute that night before the game. Naturally that then makes you feel a bit more nervous going into it.

“Then it became a bit of a downward spiral where I wasn't really able to train, so I didn't feel sharp or like I was ready.

“I just had a handful of games in the end, but I could sense just how good the team was. That was where you could really feel things were coming to fruition. We just looked really strong and dominant and had a defined style of play.

“I absolutely loved being part of it.”

The contract Lee signed in February 2014 ensured he would be part of the squad going into the Championship and Mark Warburton gave him a start at Dagenham and Redbridge in the Capital One Cup.

As it turned out, that night would not only be the last time O’Connor pulled on a Brentford shirt, but the last time Lee did, too.

“Something I was really proud of in my career was that I never conceded more than four in a game," says Lee.

"The Dagenham game was my final ever game of football – technically I only conceded four in normal time, but it ended up being 6-6. We still won the penalty shoot-out, which is probably quite fitting!

“The next morning, I spoke to Mark Warburton and I just said, ‘I'm trying my best, but I just can't’. He was really good to me because he then moved me from being a no.2 to a no.3 and I was able to see out the season, but I'd already made the decision that I needed to find a new career; there was no way of getting back.

“I just wasn't moving, there was a cross that went in, I think it went in at the far post. I just couldn't move my feet, I couldn't get the spring. Some of the doubts I had about myself were all realised in one evening.

“Mark being accommodating really helped on a personal level. I still kept myself right and there was still a role to be played, but at the same time, it did give me a good seven or eight months to actually consider what the next steps were.”

In the final months of the 2014/15 season, Lee made a shock loan move to Fulham.

True to his character, at the time Lee was open about taking on “one last challenge that excites me”, though ultimately he did not play for the Whites.

He brings up the topic, unprompted, and admits his decision might have been different were he offered the opportunity again.

“I was well aware of the rivalry between the teams, but I think it was just a part of me that was like, actually, this could be quite interesting, one final hurrah," he says.

"The lads were doing well at Brentford, what if I went in there and I did get a bit of game time?

“But I probably didn't think about it fully because, in hindsight, it was nothing other than just a different experience.

“On that level, I don't regret it because I quite enjoyed my month there, meeting a lot of new lads and the team did survive. Again, without playing, I played a bit of a part in that.

“At the same time, there wasn't really that much to gain. Given the chance again, I don't know whether I'd have actually done that, more for the fact that I probably didn't fully appreciate what it meant until the next day on Twitter.

“The last thing I wanted to do was dampen my relationship with Brentford or the Brentford fans.”