Isaac Osbourne was once a Red Army favourite for his hard work in Aberdeen’s engine room, but he is now putting hard graft into real engines – for Aston Martin.
Englishman Osbourne – who played for the Dons for two seasons from 2011 to 2013 – has built a post-football second career after being forced to retire from football through injury at just 28.
Aston Martin’s main factory, in Gaydon, Warwickshire, is 45 minutes from Osbourne’s home in the Erdington, Birmingham – with the region a hotbed for the UK the motor industry.
The now-38-year-old is a vehicle technician for the legendary British sports car brand, known for models including the DB5, DB9 and Vanquish and for their iconic association with super-spy James Bond.
Explaining how he went from being Aberdeen’s No.16 to working on the cars made famous by 007, Osbourne said: “I’m working at Aston Martin – just getting the cars ready for sale, like a few services on the vehicles and stuff like that really.
“When I came out of football, I didn’t have a clue what to do – I didn’t even know how to apply for a job!
“The first job I done after football was I worked in a warehouse for (delivery firm) UPS for about maybe 10 months, because I knew there was a certain amount of money I needed to make so I could cover my bills.
“While I was there, I applied to work at Jaguar Land Rover.
“After a few months, I started working on vehicles, and I’ve just stayed in the trade ever since.”
Contrary to stereotypes, Osbourne’s move into the automotive sector after hanging up his boots was not borne of the love of flash motors associated with footballers.
“I never had no interest in cars, to be fair”, said Osbourne – who had daughter Remaya, now 15, as well as his partner to support when he stopped playing.
Osbourne said: “My first job at Land Rover was on the production line.
“I then ended up getting to know more about the vehicles. You get to do more work on the cars, and I just kind of gradually built up my skill level.
“It is highly-skilled, but you have just got to pay attention to detail – these are expensive vehicles.”
Hamstrings hamstrung Aberdeen fans’ favourite Osbourne
Having come through at Coventry City, Osbourne played more than 100 times for the Sky Blues, but missed 18 months of football due to a left knee injury.
In the summer of 2011, late Aberdeen boss Craig Brown signed the fit-again 25-year-old after a couple of trial stints which included a pre-season tour of Germany.
Veteran Brown was in his first full season as Reds gaffer, having succeeded Mark McGhee midway through the previous campaign, and the supporters quickly took to Osbourne’s all-action, no-nonsense style in the middle of the park.
Osbourne said: “With the Scottish fans I found, especially the Aberdeen fans, I did feel the love.
“Many times I felt like I never had a great game technically on the ball, but the fact that I worked hard, they always clapped me off the pitch.
“I feel like the fans, as long as you give 100%, won’t boo you.”
In season 2011/12, Aberdeen exited the League Cup in ignominious fashion at minnows East Fife, while just five league wins had them sitting ninth by the turn of the year (Brown’s side eventually recorded back-to-back ninth-placed finishes).
Osbourne wasn’t part of the run-in, however – as he suffered the first of his two serious hamstring injuries with the Dons in the early-January of 2012 in a Scottish Cup win against Forfar Athletic.
He said: “The first one I done was against Forfar. I was playing right-back and I think the wind took me and my hamstring went.
“I think I was out for like 14 weeks… something ridiculous for a hamstring!
“But I wasn’t the only one – I think at the time we had quite a few boys that were getting hamstring injuries.
“I came back, and then the next season, I done my hamstring again.”
The Reds ‘didn’t have a fitness coach’
Having never had hamstring issues before joining the Dons, Osbourne, searching for a reason for the two quickfire issues, said: “Aberdeen is very cold, isn’t it?
“But we didn’t have a fitness coach. And that was something that I think the boys and me would have benefited from a lot – sometimes we went into games and our bodies weren’t at match tempo.”
Osbourne’s ONLY career goal
Though his fitness problems limited Osbourne to a total tally of 53 appearances (49 starts) for Aberdeen across his two seasons, his spell in red did include the only goal of his 12-year senior career – a raker to open the scoring in a 2-1 victory at St Johnstone on August 18, 2012.
Osbourne laughs: “I could actually shoot!
“But when it came to games, I just didn’t. I kept passing – I just wasn’t goal-minded.
“I remember being at Coventry, and thinking, when they said I might have to retire: ‘You’ve not even scored a goal and you might retire – you’re retiring with no goals!’
“So when I went to Aberdeen, I thought: ‘I need to score one goal… at least one goal!’
“I was happy, obviously.
“It’s a shame I never scored more, but yeah, I watch it a couple of times on YouTube once or twice a year – that’s my only highlight!
“Even my daughter said her friends at school say: ‘Oh, your dad only scored one goal.'”
‘Lovely fella’ Craig Brown and ‘very funny’ Archie Knox, who got ‘dressed backwards’
Osbourne says he “loved” working under the late Brown – who died in 2023 – and assistant Knox at Aberdeen.
They were in some ways a “very, very old school” duo, he added – strictly against players cutting holes in their socks or playing with their shirts untucked.
On “very smart guy” Brown – a master of turning the “narrative” in the press if “when we played bad” – Osbourne said: “I don’t know if I’ve got the right words to say to give him justice… but Craig Brown, to me, was a legend – I remember watching him in Euro 96 when he was a Scotland manager.
“Rest in peace, Craig Brown, man. I would have loved to have gone to his funeral. He was a lovely fella.”
Osbourne added: “When I first came up, I had more of a relationship with Archie, as he’d seen me in England a couple of years before.
“Archie was funny.
“He used to get dressed backwards – he used to put on his shirt, his socks, his shoes, then put on his pants afterwards… he used to be kind of just letting everything hang while he got dressed!
“But he was just very funny. He knew what my strengths were and he knew what my weaknesses were.
“He used to say about the team: ‘We need to play forward. But you, Isaac, you just do what you do – Isaac’s going to play back!'”
Osbourne: Why I regret leaving Aberdeen
Close to the end of the 2012/13 campaign, Osbourne had decided to leave Aberdeen and find a club closer to his partner and daughter, who were back living in the Midlands.
He recovered from his latter hamstring injury – which largely ruled him out from the November to the post-split during his second season – to bid farewell, playing centre-back in the last four matches of Brown’s successor Derek McInnes‘ first five games in charge.
Having been “very impressed” with the new coaching regime, Osbourne insists, even though he had already made the decision to go, he had a feeling success was just around the corner for the club – who quickly won the League Cup in 2014 and became top-half stalwarts during McInnes’ seven full seasons in charge.
Osbourne said: “Me and Rob Milsom (who also left in summer 2013) – we used to share an apartment for a short time – we used to talk, and Rob used to say: ‘I’d love to stay here next year with the new management.’
“I already had told my missus that IÂ was coming back – but, to be honest with you, I wanted to stay as well.
Englishman ‘would have been part of the success’
“I felt like great things were on the horizon. I just felt like we were probably going to compete… or definitely compete to get a cup or two.”
Looking back more than a decade later, Osbourne admits he regrets leaving Aberdeen when he did.
He said: “I just missed being away from my family, that’s the only thing.
“But I do regret leaving, because I feel like if I would have stayed, I would have been part of the success that they had.”
News Osbourne was to remain in Scotland with Partick Thistle was a confusing development when it was announced later in the summer of 2013.
But the former Don explained his earlier attempts to find a new club south of the border saw him receive just “one offer from Scunthorpe”.
He said: “I didn’t plan to go back to Scotland, especially at Partick – I had to go on Google and search the team.
“To be honest with you, the main reason why I went there was the guy on the phone said they were going to make me captain – and when I went there, they didn’t make me no captain!
“But I still enjoyed it. They were a great footballing team.”
Osbourne reveals negotiations with McInnes over Aberdeen return
Before signing on at Scottish Premier League rivals Partick, Osbourne explained how he actually tried to engineer a return to McInnes’ Aberdeen, realising he had made a mistake.
Osbourne – who also attempted to put feelers out for a Dons return the next summer before he joined final club St Mirren – said:Â Â “When I left, he (McInnes) actually gave me an option.
“At the end of the last game of the season, he said to me: ‘There’s a year deal there if you want it.
“‘I know you said you want to go back to see the family, but if you change your mind, let us know as soon as possible.’
“I phoned him, and he said: ‘What would you take?’ I told him £500 less than what I had been getting.
“But he’s not got back to me, and then the next time I phoned him, he said: ‘Oh, we’ve got Michael Hector in, and the money is a bit too much.’ It was too late!”
Retiring at 28 after breaking BOTH ankles
Osbourne’s post-Aberdeen spells at both Partick (2014/15) and St Mirren (2015/16), were wrecked by breaks to both his right and left ankles.
He said: “I think every game I played at Partick Thistle, they gave me player of the match.
“But then about 15 games into it (against St Johnstone in December 2013) I broke my ankle.
“I went for a tackle, and my studs got stuck in the ground – the pitch was kind of waterlogged, and the game got called off 10 minutes after that.
“I was out until the end of the season.”
Further misfortune was to come for Osbourne at next team St Mirren… against the Partick side he had just left.
“I wasn’t the same player, but I think I done well the first few games,” Osbourne said.
Retirement ‘devastated’ Osbourne
“When I fractured the left ankle (in September 2014), that was Abdul Osman, who came there (to Partick) and took my spot.
“He took a heavy touch, so I went to intercept it. He stretched and just went clean through my ankle.”
Although Osbourne would return to the Buddies team within three months of this second ankle break in quick succession, by February 2015 there was “too much pain” to play on.
In April 2015, before the end of the season, and following a breakdown in his relationship with boss Gary Teale – after a game against Aberdeen – Osbourne left St Mirren by mutual consent and “went and got another operation”.
He did not initially think he was “done” as a player, but, despite multiple rounds of rehab, including at English FA facility St George’s Park, and even desperate efforts to run on the damaged left ankle and a further operation, “that was it” football-wise.
‘I’m still in pain’
A “devastated” Osbourne had to give up the game, aged only 28.
“Even now, I’m still in pain. Obviously, I was devastated, and it took me a long time to get over it mentally,” added Osbourne – whose only ongoing football involvement in 2025 is coaching his daughter’s girls’ side, Solihull Strikers.
“(But) at Coventry, they said I might have to retire at 23 or 24, so to be honest with you, I was grateful I got a few more years.
“It could have been a lot sooner, couldn’t it? I’ve had friends who had to retire in their teens.
“If my nephew or my godson make it into the game, then it’s just one of the things I’ll pass on – with injuries, just make sure you take your time, or get a second opinion, because these things can take years off of your career.
“I’m grateful for what I had.”
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