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.

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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