Ex-Files David Lucas
Born in Preston, Lucas signed professionally with Preston North End back in December 1994, at the age of 16. He is one of the very few players that in recent years was born in Preston and went on to play for them, putting him in the same catagory as the likes of Sir Tom Finney.
Lucas finally made made his debut for Preston in the 1995/1996 season but turned out to be his only appearance for Preston that year before going out on loan to Darlington, to gain some valuable experience. Lucas made 6 appearances for Darlo before being sent back on loan a year later. His second spell at Darlington came after making just 3 appearances in Preston shirt in the 1996/1997 season before joining Scunthorpe, the last of his two loan spells that year.
As a young, promising prospect, Lucas was farmed out on loan for the majority of his time in his early years at Deepdale with the North End supremo opting for him to gain experience rather than sit on the bench.
After various successful loan spells, the inevitable happened and Lucas became the new number one at Deepdale. His first full season as such came in the 1998/1999 season where he went on to make an impressive33 league appearances. Showing that he can be a consistent performer for the Preston first team Lucas was hoping to cement his place as the undisputed number one. Lucas however, lost his place to the towering presence of Tepi Moilanen and played second fiddle to the big Fin for the vast majority of the 1999/2000 season.
Although he wasn't getting as much regular first team action as he would have liked, he was in competition for the number one spot which he could take a lot of credit for seeing as though at 22, he was still very young for a goalkeeper.
He and Moilanen seemed to share the gloves at Deepdale for many seasons, possibly because they were both very different as players. Lucas was an agile shot stopped where as Moilanen perhaps had a better aerial presence and was more commanding of his area. Working together in training seemed to bring out the best of the pair of them, Lucas did show signs of being more assertive with his penalty area and Tepi showed that he was a decent shot stopped also.
However, when Moilanen left Deepdale in 2003 instead of Lucas claiming the number one shirt as his own, he fell further down the pecking order due to the arrival of Jonathan Gould. In search of first team football, Lucas left Deepdale and moved across the Pennines to join Sheffield Wednesday where he had to compete with the seasoned veteran, Kevin Pressman for the place between the sticks.
At Hillsborough, Lucas became the number one again for the firs time since his earlier days at Preston and made 80 league and cup appearances for the Owls before joining Yorkshire rivals, Barnsley. Despite being reunited with his former colleagues from Preston, namely Simon Davey and Ryan Kidd he was unable to force his way into the starting eleven.
Lucas appeared just three times for the Tykes and can now be seen at yet another Yorkshire outfit, Leeds United where he has become back up for the first team keeper, Casper Ankergren.