Undetected heart condition left former Portsmouth loanee fearing for football future

Earlier this season, the Hibs midfielder was struggling for breath, fatigued and suffering dizzy spells, impacting on his performances.

He was eventually diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart’s walls.

Allan, who had two loan spells at Fratton Park totalling 25 games and two goals, took time out after August.

He returned to action late last month, while appeared as a 75th-minute substitute in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Hamilton.

In an interview with Hibs TV, the 29-year-old said: ‘I was diagnosed with a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. That’s when the walls of the heart chamber become slightly thicker and makes it hard to pump blood in and out of the heart.

‘I had symptoms that led me to get tests. It makes you fatigued, less oxygen throughout your body, I was getting dizzy spells. They all integrated with each other. When the professor told me, I knew that was why I was getting these symptoms.

‘Fatigue is one of the main ones and I was fatiguing really quickly when I was playing.

‘I really feared I wouldn’t play again, the way I had been feeling physically up until I had that test. What I could give on the football pitch at that time, it was really worrying.”

‘When you’ve already lived your life with type one diabetes from such an early age, it was always in the back of my mind that if anything was going to cause me problems, it would’ve been that.

‘So to be diagnosed with something else while you’re still in your prime and in a season I was really looking forward to stamping my authority on, on the human side it was a really difficult time.’

Allan initially arrived at Fratton Park on loan from West Brom in February 2012.

He made 15 appearances and scored once, yet couldn’t prevent Michael Appleton’s men suffering relegation from the Championship.

The attacking midfielder returned to the south coast in October 2012 for a two-and-a-half month stay, racking up another 10 outings and a goal.

He has since played for Celtic and is now in his third Hibernian spell.

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