Joe Hart and 21 Others (Part Three)

You can find Part One here, and Part Two here...

Now, after scouring many different levels of football from Shawbury United to Barcelona, just two players remain. In true football programme spirit, the first of those has ‘Played for both clubs!’: Ramon Calliste, who rather hilariously was named the 87^th best young footballer in the world by Spanish magazine Don Balon in 2001 – a list which also put Djibril Cissé top and Jermaine Pennant 5^th. Kaká is 95^th.  Calliste was discarded by United and then Liverpool and Scunthorpe, and was at Cambridge City when Paul Simpson offered him a trial in January 2009. This didn’t lead anywhere, and as Calliste afterwards tried his luck at Lincoln, Town signed goal-machine and fan-favourite Jamie Cureton on loan. Or something like that. Calliste has since disappeared from the football world.

All better than Kaká

Perhaps the most unusual career of any player featuring in this match is that of Ben Collett. A promising midfielder who scored in the aforementioned FA Youth Cup final in 2003, Collett won the Jimmy Murphy Young Player of the Year trophy that season, following in the footsteps of Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil Neville, and of course John Curtis and Ronnie Wallwork. Recent winners include Danny Welbeck, Giuseppe Rossi and Federico Macheda. 

Just a week after the cup final, United’s reserves played Middlesbrough’s, when a crippling tackle from Boro midfielder Gary Smith destroyed Collett’s leg. Collett never properly recovered, playing a few non-descript reserve matches such as this one against Shrewsbury and having brief spells in New Zealand and the Dutch second division, and ultimately the tackle ended his career. A three month court battle finished in August 2008 with a £4.5m payout following testimonies from Gary Neville, Brian McClair, Howard Wilkinson and Sir Alex Ferguson, who described Collett as showing “fantastic focus, a great attitude to work hard and they are qualities to give any player an outstanding chance in the game."

Collett has been lucky to be rewarded with such a handsome payout, but the court accounted for a relatively small £13,000 weekly wage until the age of 35. If he had progressed to the England side and the Man United first team, he would surely be earning more than sixty or seventy thousand per week now, still only 26. It is of course difficult to predict his career – going back to the previous winners of the Jimmy Murphy award he could have been a Paul Scholes or a Ronnie Wallwork. Either way, it’s always a shame when a young talent gets so unfairly extinguished, and no one will ever know what might have been. Following the hearing, with the judge praising his intelligence and commitment, Collett went on to study English at the University of Leeds, where he has probably had to spend three years thinking up excuses to avoid buying every round of drinks.

To the game itself!

With Ross Stephens taking Ryan Lowe’s place on the left wing, town lined up in a 3-5-2 formation. Joe Hart, at 17 years old, had a couple of dodgy early moments in the Town goal and a sliced clearance led to a corner from which Gerard Piqué beat Jamie Tolley to nod in for an early lead. After some Town pressure, Tolley equalised on 23 minutes with a fine low drive before putting in Ross Stephens, who spurned the chance to put Town ahead.

On the half hour mark, Dave Edwards suffered a knock and was replaced by Marco Adaggio. The United contingent panicked as they tried to create a plan to stop this skilled maestro, probably using tactics the first team had been working on to stop Thierry Henry.  It paid off as five minutes later Colin Heath nodded home a David Poole cross from close range.

Shortly after the break Jake Sedgemore committed the cardinal lower-league sin of thinking rather than hoofing as he tried to play one of those fancy Dan offside traps, which obviously failed and Heath ran through to score his second underneath Hart. There were no mistakes on the hour mark though as Ramon Calliste scored with a brilliant solo effort to put United 4-1 up with the game effectively over. A fifth soon followed as Heath turned creator, sliding in Mads Timm to put the icing on the cake.

With the pressure off for both teams, Town finally got into the game with Tolley and Adaggio, the United defence probably realising that he’s not Ronaldinho, doing well to create space but missing chances. Tolley was involved in Town’s consolation however as his thunderous strike came back off the crossbar for Robert Eggington to tap in.

A crowd of 822 watched United win 5-2, a huge total for a reserve fixture. I’ve not checked, but I would be surprised if there has ever been a higher attendance for a reserve game at Town, in recent times at least – although thousands did go to the Buck’s Head a few years ago to watch Steven Gerrard come back from injury against Wolves Reserves.

In the return fixture at Hyde United’s ground in January 2005, Town lost 3-0 to a United side including Giuseppe Rossi, who scored, and future Town midfielder Steven Hogg. David Fox and another from Ramon Calliste completed the scoring. United rather predictably won the Pontins League that season from Carlisle and Blackpool, with Town languishing in 10^th, taking 21 points from 22 games in the 12 team league.

	pld	w	d	l	f	a	pts
1. Manchester United	22	14	5	3	49	28	47
2. Carlisle United	22	13	3	6	43	36	42
3. Blackpool	22	12	4	6	34	21	40
4. Oldham Athletic	22	12	3	7	48	34	39
5. Bury	22	10	7	5	30	23	37
6. Macclesfield Town	22	8	7	7	31	27	31
7. Burnley	22	5	11	6	24	21	26
8. Chester City	22	7	3	12	25	37	24
9. Stockport County	22	5	7	10	28	37	22
10. Shrewsbury Town	22	5	6	11	25	31	21
11. Rochdale	22	4	6	12	23	38	18
12. Wrexham	22	6	0	16	27	54	18

Reserve football has many cons and few pros, but the sheer variation in quality, reputation and experience of players even on the same team is unmatched anywhere else in the sport. Only fans of obscure football trivia could argue against Graham Turner’s withdrawal of a proper reserve side for Shrewsbury this season, in favour of ad-hoc games against local opposition with similar requirements. The benefits of a guaranteed standard of playing surface, reduced travel and no obligation to field a side each week outweigh the chance of the supposed competitive football which in reality, reserve fixtures don’t really provide.

So, from the players taking to the pitch that night at Gay Meadow, some are now managers, a couple grace the Premier League, some play at the very foot of the English pyramid, one plays in front of 90,000 adoring Catalans at the Nou Camp, one has an English degree and a presumably very comfortable student lifestyle, some play abroad, four for their country, and a couple have sunk without trace. Clubs ranging from Deeping Rangers to Barcelona are represented, with payment from a fiver for expenses to £100,000 per week. But thanks to the quirky and underappreciated nature of second-string football, they all shared the same turf that one night in 2004.

Joe Hart and 21 Others (Part Two)

For Part One please click here

There were three other continental players lining up for United – Mads Timm, Markus Neumayr and the one and only Floribert N’Galula. Whilst no constituent of this exotic triumvirate made the grade at Old Trafford, all forged professional careers of some descripton: German midfielder Neumayr currently graces the Swiss Premier League with FC Thun and Mads Timm retired in 2009 after an injury struck few seasons in his Danish homeland, nevertheless being called up for Denmark (without playing) after impressive performances for Odense BK (coincidentally the home of another United reject, Eric Djemba-Djemba). Belgian midfielder N’Galula plays in the Finnish Premier League for Turun Palloseura, home of Football Manager hero Mika Ääritalo, after an ill-fated month-long spell for DC United in the MLS proved fruitless.

Our tour of the more obscure leagues in Europe continues with another trip to Denmark, where, as mentioned at the start, two of our own ply their footballing trade. Their travel itinerary shown above, left back Adam Eckersley and centre half Mark Howard are big successes for AGF Aarhus, with Mark being voted player of the season in 2011 as AGF were crowned champions of the Danish First Division. Whilst neither of the Salford lads made an impression at United, credit to them for gambling on success abroad when countless others, including several in this match, have instead been happy to settle for a lower level English club.

Those middling players of varying quality who, whilst not qualifying as a success on the Hart/Piqué scale, have forged accomplished and, to the rest of us at least, lucrative careers in the lower leagues include former England U21 and Cardiff City ‘keeper Tom Heaton and Ipswich winger Lee Martin, both of whom are established Championship players. Aged 25 and 24 respectively, both players still have much chance to play regularly in the Premier League – Heaton especially, accounting for the dearth of English goalkeepers at present. 

Moving down the leagues, Ritchie Jones is currently available on a free after a successful spell in midfield for Oldham, as is winger David Poole following Stockport’s relegation. Both however have played more than 100 games in the Football League, which is more that can be said of Colin Heath, a striker who spent six years as a non-playing professional at Old Trafford followed by mediocre performances for Chesterfield, Macclesfield, and finally Farsley Celtic before an early retirement. Still, this practically makes him Pelé when compared to sub ‘keeper Lee Crockett, currently in nets for Deeping Rangers (whose ground is shown above, next to Old Trafford for comparison), in the Hereward Teamwear United Counties League - five divisions below the Football League.

Around this period, United ran two reserve teams – the one featuring here in the Pontins Holiday League, and another in the FA Premier Reserve League North. The Pontins team was dropped not long after this season, and as a result many of these players sadly found their development stunted by a dramatic decrease of playing time.

Of the Town regulars, Ryan Lowe spent last season scoring 27 goals to fire Bury to League One, being trusted by Alan Knill and Richie Barker in a way he sadly never really experienced at Shrewsbury. However, this is fairly irrelevant here since Lowe didn’t actually feature in this reserve fixture – a late, post-teamsheet-printing change of heart brought in Ross Stephens, a left sided player who had some involvement in the first team before naturally moving to the Welsh Premier League where he is something of a club whore – at the time of writing, Prestatyn Town are his sixth club in the division.

Utility man Jake Sedgemore plays at Nantwich Town under the co-stewardship of two ex-Town teammates, Kevin Street and Darren Tinson (above), whilst Dave Ridler is player manager at Prescot Cables playing a division below. Jamie Tolley, who like reality television seems to have been around forever, is incredibly still just 28 and playing for Wrexham in the Conference, whilst Dave Walton, a true Town hero after his first successful spell in the mid 1990s, was forced to retire at the end of 2005 as a knee injury ruined his Indian summer. 

Former League Cup finalist Martin O’Connor, playing in the twilight of his career, had a final few games for Kidderminster in 2005 before assisting Chris Hutchings in the destruction of Walsall. In 2000 the balance of internationals in this match may have been swung to Town’s favour as the Cayman Islands sneakily tried to exploit their status as a British Overseas Territory by simply calling up British players such as O’Connor, who, along with others of emphatically non-Cayman heritage, played a friendly against DC United before FIFA stepped in and made possibly their only logical decision of the decade in disallowing it.

As it stands, the international count is critically level – along with Piqué and Hart each side provides a home-nations regular, both of whom seem stuck in that purgatory gap between the Premier League and the Championship. 

Paul McShane starred in the Championship for West Brom in 2006/07, winning his first Irish caps that season, before earning a move to the big time with Sunderland paying £1.5m for the defender as he became another disciple of Roy Keane’s beard. McShane didn’t set the world alight at the Stadium of Light though as the following summer he moved again to newly-promoted Hull City, initially on loan, and took part in Phil Brown’s famous sit-down teamtalk at Eastlands – a move which quite impressively ruined Hull’s entire season after what had been a good start at that point. Tellingly, McShane returned to Sunderland in January and Hull escaped relegation, before signing permanently that summer. After which Hull were promptly relegated. 

Out of all of United’s famous FA Youth Cup victories, their 2003 triumph over Middlesbrough was probably the most underwhelming. No member of that team remains at Old Trafford, with Kieran Richardson and Chris Eagles having the most success for the first team, which tells you all you need to know (although Phil Bardsley and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake have proved moderately successful elsewhere). McShane, Timm and Collett started that final, with Heaton, Howard, Calliste and Poole on the bench – and ex-Shrewsbury loanee Lee Lawrence at left-back. Sadly for many of the players in United’s side that day, it represented the only highlight of their entire football career – although on the losing side, Ross Turnbull, David Wheater, Andrew Taylor, Chris Brunt and James Morrison all started.

Perhaps the most pleasantly surprising success from a Shrewsbury perspective has been Dave Edwards. Whilst Joe Hart was always clearly talented, it wouldn’t be impolite to state that many Town fans considered Dave Edwards, especially alongside his partner in haircuts Jamie Tolley, a bit of a luxury. Still, after Mark Atkins handed him his debut against Scunthorpe in the last game before the Conference Season, he gradually improved, and his controversial dropping by Gary Peters before the playoff final is still debated to this day. 

A tribunal-set fee of £250,000 led to a move to the struggling Luton Town, where Edwards hung around just long enough to impress in a 1-1 FA Cup draw with Liverpool and earn himself a £675,000 transfer to Wolves, where he remains. Edwards played a key part in Wolves’ promotion to the Premier League in 2008/09, but has since struggled with injuries and has not featured regularly in the top flight. A highlight this season has been scoring the winner past his old friend Joe Hart in a 2-1 win over City.

You can find Part One here. The final part, including Ramon Calliste, Ben Collett and an actual match report, is here.