It's difficult to rattle Andy Hall.

He located unexploded bombs, so he's not the nervy sort.

Carlisle United's Media Officer was a soldier for 25 years and spent two and a half years locating bombs on tours of Afghanistan, Iraq and Northern Ireland.

Incredibly, Hall, 41, even combined the two jobs for eight years before retiring from the Army in May.

He said: "The best example of doing both jobs was when I found myself in South Armagh one Thursday morning.

"We had flown in, found the bomb, and cordoned off the area.

"I had also arranged to do an interview with the manager Paul Simpson that morning.

"It was chucking it down with rain, and I was soaked to the skin in the middle of nowhere but I thought, 'I'll ring him anyway.'

"We did the interview - and Paul didn't have a clue where I was or what I was doing!"

The lifelong Carlisle supporter joined the Royal Engineers in 1984 when he left school.

It was the start of a glittering Army career that was rewarded in 2005 with an MBE for his work on operational tours between April 2002 and November 2004.

He said: "It was my job to find and identify bombs. They would then be disposed of by another team. If you are on tour you work all hours God sends."

Yet the married father-of-two squeezed in the time to help out on the Carlisle website after impressing former chairman John Courtenay with an unofficial club website that he ran at the turn of the decade.

By 2005, Hall was solely responsible for the club's media output.

He said: "I would piggy-back the two jobs. Often I would go back to the Army base and interview players or write news stories.

"I would also write match reports. If I was in England I would go to every game. If I was in another country, it was a case of picking it up from radio commentaries and newspaper reports and cobbling it together.

"I owe a massive thanks to my wife and kids. I sacrificed a lot of time with them to show Carlisle what I could do."

On match days Hall writes reports for the website as well as for local papers.

He also provides content for the website, puts together the match programme and compiles all club publications.

He said: "The job is almost a dream come true. The next best thing to being in the team is to being close to the team.

"When you have supported a club all your life, working for it and being one of the first to know what is going on, that gives you a bit of a buzz.

"If you asked me if this job is more of a pleasure than being a soldier, the answer would be yes."

Now that he has retired from the Army, Hall is based full-time at the club and, incredibly, he will also double up as Carlisle's kit man next season.

He said: "I will set up the kit before the game, break away and do my Press Box duties, get quotes from the manager and then sort the kit out afterwards.

"I'm actually looking forward to it. A lot of people will be helping me out and, seeing as I will be at every match anyway, I thought I could lend a hand."

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