Career
Heaney started out playing on his native Teesside before being signed by London club Arsenal on schoolboy forms in January 1987. After spells on loan at Hartlepool United and Cambridge United, he made his Arsenal début as a substitute against Sheffield United on 18 April 1992. A winger with considerable pace, he was on the fringes of the Arsenal first team over the next two seasons, before being suddenly sold by George Graham to Southampton for £300,000 in March 1994.
He made nine senior appearances for Arsenal in total, failing to score.
He became Alan Ball"s third signing for the Saints (just before the transfer deadline) and scored his first goal against Newcastle United on 22 March 1995. Heaney came on as a substitute with Saints 1–0 down, and with four minutes left he prodded home a loose ball after a save by Pavel Srníček from Gordon Watson"s header.
Watson and Neil Shipperley completed the scoring to see Saints run out unlikely 3–1 winners. Saints then managed to climb up the table to finish in 10th place.
According to Holley & Chalk, Heaney "had the ability and pace to turn matches, but could frustrate with a tendency to run up blind alleys."
Heaney made 61 league appearances for Southampton in two and a half seasons (scoring five goals), before being sold for £500,000 to Frank Clark"s Manchester City in November 1996.
He eventually left Maine Road in August 1999, dropping down a couple of divisions to join Darlington, before seeing out his career with spells at Dundee United (where he was described by chairman Jim McLean as a "bad" signing) and Plymouth Argyle. He retired in December 2002 due to injury. After retiring, Heaney left football and became Chief Executive Officer of Judicare, a full-service Spanish law firm and a United Kingdom legal-services company that recover monies invested into problematic property abroad, based partly on his own problems investing in Spanish property.