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 One)

...Or more accurately: Joe Hart, Gerard Piqué and 29 others. After reading Colin Shindler's fantastic book covering the fortunes of George Best and the 21 others who took the field in a City/United Youth Cup game in 1964, I dug out my team sheet from the day Shrewsbury Town Reserves took on Manchester United's second string in the Pontins Reserve League on 15th September 2004. 

On a warm autumnal evening, in front of a rusty Gay Meadow Centre Stand that was riotous for a reserve fixture, ran out 31 youths, journeymen, injured first-teamers and footballballing nomads - a group which in years to come would provide four internationals (including a World Cup winner), several players of varying success through the Football League, a player involved in a multi-million pound court case over the brutally premature ending of his career, and of course a significant number who have drifted helplessly through the nether regions of non-league. There are even two Englishmen who have gone against all known wisdom and taken the gamble of plying their trade abroad... albeit at the same club, presumably to have someone familiar to cuddle up to at night.

The teamsheet that day reads as follows:

Shrewsbury Town: Joe Hart, Henry Goh, Jake Sedgemore, David Ridler, David Walton, Martin O'Connor, Ryan Lowe [Ross Stephens], Jamie Tolley, Robert Eggington, David Edwards, Pedro Matias.
Subs: Damien Stevens, Gavin Cadwallader, Gary Price, Marco Adaggio, Liam Murray.

Manchester United: Tom Heaton, David Poole, Adam Eckersley, Paul McShane, Gerard Pique, Floribert N’Galula, Ramon Calliste, Richard Jones, Colin Heath, Mads Timm, Ben Collett.
Subs: Lee Martin, Lee Crockett, Markus Neumayr, Mark Howard.

From Town’s starting XI, all but Hart, Goh, Eggington, and the trialist Matías were regular first-teamers in the 2004-05 season, but as Hart has become England’s unquestioned number one and one of the first names on a Man City team sheet which looks destined for years of oil-fuelled success, Goh and Eggington have sadly fallen from the radar. Right-back Goh was signed by Aberystwyth Town in 2008 in the League of Shrewsbury Town Rejects (known as the Welsh Premier League for sponsorship reasons), but tellingly my main recollection of Henry is seeing him frequent the same under-age drinking establishments as me. Headline writers nationwide have mourned the loss of such a pun-able name from their arsenal. 

As for the striker Eggington... well... an internet search tells me he was a regular in the reserves and youth teams through that season but after that, even Google is stumped. We can only assume that he is hiding in a cave in the Stretton hills somewhere, taking turns with Richey Edwards and Lord Lucan to go for discreet night-time rides on Shergar.

Still, I can proudly boast that the name Robert Eggington does at least stir my memory, and it has to be said that with my obsession for all things Shrewsbury Town around that time this shouldn’t be surprising. As well as attending every home game and nearly all away, I took full advantage of my season ticket to watch many reserve games, and in fact anything at all that happened to be taking place at the Meadow. The pinnacle of this involved the privilege of watching the famous grudge match between Isle of Man Ladies and Shropshire Ladies, but that’s another story.

I explain this not to boast, as if there is anything to boast about spending literally all my disposable income and free time watching gutter-quality football, but to demonstrate that my failure to recall a single memory, not even a tiny small print in the programme or a mutinous mutter in the Wakeman End about any of Damien Stevens, Liam Murray or Gary Price does not bode well for their particular football careers. However, it turns out that the internet is actually a slightly more effective search tool than my memory, and I can report that Stevens is now Shawbury United’s number one, Price is a rock in Hanwood United’s defence, and Liam Murray is a regular for AFC Telford, the traditional feeder club for the League of Shrewsbury Town Rejects.

As for for Town’s remaining benched starlets: Marco Adaggio (above), who as we all used to sing was better than Baggio, suffered from that long held disease of having a fancy foreign sounding name – we all thought he was a continental wonderkid who had slipped through the net at Barcelona and miraculously ended up at Gay Meadow. Everybody was sure he would dazzle Division Three for a season or so before being sold to AC Milan for £10m. As it happened, he made 10 fruitless appearances, all off the bench, before slinking down the leagues where more fans could get excited about his name before being disappointed. Marco now plays for Stafford Rangers, where he seems quite popular, but as Roberto Baggio was playing in the World Cup by his age (23), this does seem a bit of a letdown.  

 

If the Tolleys are the Kennedys of the Shropshire football scene, the Cadwalladers are definitely the Milibands and the last of our substitutes, Gavin Cadwallader, actually made two underwhelming first team league appearances for Town. More significant however is that at the age of 25, whilst still playing in Wales (obviously), Gavin has become a youth coach for Town, a very sensible and commendable move which will surely prolong his career in the game much further than many of his more successful playing peers. Mark Cadwallader, incidentally, most recently played with the mighty Neil Sorvil for Northwich Victoria. Lucky man.

The trialist on show that night is where the continental connection begins. Pedro Matías actually began his career at Real Madrid, playing three seasons for their B team in the mid 1990s before becoming a journeyman first in the Segunda, and then the lower English leagues, notably becoming a cult hero at Walsall. Pedro must have been slightly peeved that one of the handful of opportunities he had to prove himself at Town before professional retirement pitted him directly against a certain fellow countryman...

Gerard Piqué had just signed for Man United from Barcelona using the same legal loophole that Arsenal used for Cesc Fabregas, amongst many others. As a promising defender he made 23 appearances over four years for United, generally being too good to send out on loan (except to Real Zaragoza in 2006) but too raw to displace Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand. 

An amicable return home followed in 2008 for the now-ridiculously low fee of £5m, and three seasons later Piqué has formed a partnership with Carles Puyol for both club and country, creating the bedrock of arguably the greatest club football team of all time. Piqué has added a World Cup winners’ medal and Shakira to the ten competitions he has won playing for his boyhood heroes, earning in a week what most people earn in three or four years. It’s alright for some. But on one night in 2004, he shared Gay Meadow turf with the mysterious lesser-spotted Robert Eggington.

Part Two, which includes the fortunes of Dave Edwards, Paul McShane and many others across Europe can be found here

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