THE life of a footballer is imagined to be one of glitz and glamour with all the trappings of the millionaire lifestyle. But that is only true for a select few at the very top of the tree, and Ryan Scully, who has just been released from Partick Thistle following their relegation to the Championship, feels a long way from that summit just now.

The 25-year-old goalkeeper has played understudy to Tomas Cerny for most of the last few seasons and now finds himself without a club after spending more than a decade at Firhill as man and boy. He admits it is an alien and unsettling feeling.

“There’s a huge misconception when it comes to most footballers, especially up here,” Scully said. “People look at the English Premier League players getting 100 grand a week but guys up here are on nothing like that at all, even the top players.

“People just think that if you’re a footballer you will get something, but it’s never as easy as that. It’s not a nice situation to be out of contract and looking for a club, and you don’t know when the next pay cheque is going to come in. It’s a tense time for everybody.

“It’s a horrible situation. I didn’t really think about myself during the relegation play-offs and when it was apparent we were going to lose, but after a few days, you find yourself left in limbo and it’s a huge reality check. I’ve never been in this situation before, I’ve always had that contract with Thistle, so it’s new for me.”

The double-whammy of relegation for his club and then being freed has caught Scully cold. Like many of his team-mates, he had been working under the assumption Thistle would claw their way to safety.

“It entered my head now and again as the season was drawing to a close that my future might be up in the air here, but for the most part, I think that most of the boys thought we would get out of it,” he said. “There was this feeling that we were only a couple of wins away from being all right, and then they never came.

“Getting relegated was a horrible feeling and being around the club at that time was an awful experience. The gaffer told us as soon as the game finished that there was going to be massive changes. Most of the boys went away on holiday straight away, but the boys that could, came into the stadium on the Monday and were told about the cuts. With Tomas still being at the club for another year, they couldn’t afford to have both of us at the club.

“I had a wee bit of an inkling that might be the case, but it still wasn’t nice to hear after being at the club for so long. I’m still not sure it has sunk in.”

When Thistle published the news of his release, seeing his name on a long list of players who were also being freed simply felt like salt had been poured into his wounds.

“I was a bit disappointed to see it coming out like that,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting a tribute or anything like that, but I expected just a wee bit more. I had been there for over 10 years, experienced quite a lot and done quite a bit for the club as well, so that was a bit upsetting to see that.

“But I wish the club nothing but the best for the future. It’s a great club with a lot of really good people there, and hopefully they can bounce back quickly into the Premiership.”

Scully was due to go away after the season ended to celebrate girlfriend Jade’s graduation, and he was relishing the chance to get some distance from the relegation fall-out to regain some perspective, but in a hellish week, even that didn’t go to plan.

“I got home after the Livingston game, put on my phone and had loads of messages, but one was from Ryanair saying my flight for my holiday to Barcelona had been cancelled,” he said. “I was thinking ‘Jesus Christ, what next?’

“We ended up going to Cyprus, and it was nice to just get away from everything for a week.

“Now I’m back and I’ll be meeting up with my agent soon to discuss what is on the table. I’m definitely open to offers. Ideally, I’d be aiming for the Championship. I think that would be a good test for me. I’ve played in League One for two years when I was on loan at Dunfermline, but if the right offer came up, I’d look into it and be up for it. If I need to go outside of Scotland then so be it. Football is a weird career and you have to go wherever the opportunity arises to play.

“It’s also a short career and you never know when it is going to end, so you sometimes have to take a few chances here and there. My options are definitely open.”

What makes Scully’s predicament all the more precarious is his lack of exposure in recent times, with his worry being that he will either have become typecast as a back-up goalkeeper, or slipped from consciousness altogether. But he is attempting to focus on the positive, and he hopes that being shaken out of his comfort zone may end up being the making of him.

“It’s obviously a concern that you can be put into that sub goalie category,” he said. “People think ‘he’s a good guy and he might be good around the club and be happy to sit on the bench, but he’s not really a threat to go and be the number one’. I never wanted to be like that, but it can be easy to fall into that situation, especially if we were still in the Premiership. It can be seen as a cushy wee number, getting those two-year deals and falling into that comfort zone.

“I think that this could actually work out the best for me, because it shakes me out of that and I have to go and challenge myself again.”