Jim Magilton on the challenge facing young Conor Bradley as he pursues Anfield dream
IT was April 24, 1954 and Liverpool had been beaten 3-0 at Blackpool, their relegation confirmed after 49 years in the First Division. It proved to be Woodvale man Sammy Smyth’s last game for the Reds.
Aged only 29, he opted to end his professional career in favour of what was, thanks to the maximum player wage of £15-perweek, a more lucrative move back home to Belfast, following in his father’s footsteps as a bookmaker.
Football, Liverpool and players’ wages have become unrecognisable since but amidst the almost complete metamorphosis, one facet has remained constant.
Since Smyth left the Bloomfield Road pitch, not a single man from Northern Ireland has played a competitive minute for Liverpool FC.
In the intervening 66 years, as many as 24 — including the likes of George Best, Norman Whiteside and Keith Gillespie — have featured for Manchester United.
The hopes of Cliff Ferguson, head of the Reds’ development centres across Ireland, is that particular score can begin to be settled with Conor Bradley.
The Tyrone teenager will sign a three-year professional deal when he turns 17 next month and, clearly, is highly thought of over at Anfield.
Between Smyth and Bradley, several ‘next great hopes’ have come and gone at the club without making a dent on the senior side.
Most recently, Ryan Mclaughlin departed in 2016 having marked Francesco Totti in a pre-season fixture against Roma but saw injuries put paid to his hopes of going a step further.
Before that, future Irish League stars Davy Larmour, Rod Mcaree and Sean Friars only made it as far as Sammy Lee’s reserves in the 1990s.
Perhaps the closest of all to following in Smyth’s path, however, was Jim Magilton.
Then 16, he was spotted by Liverpool’s chief scout, and former Ballymena United boss, Geoff Twentyman while playing for Distillery.
Like Bradley a lifelong fan, he didn’t need much coaxing to make the switch, even if he did have to work through his mother’s ‘education, education, education’ mindset.
She needn’t have worried. While he may have been leaving the classroom at St Mary’s, Magilton was entering the most important learning experience of his life — one that he says is still paying dividends over 30 years later, as he leads the next generation of stars as the Irish FA’S Elite Performance Director.
“It was a great time for me to go over,” he said of joining what was in January 1986, as now, the best team in England.
“I watched top-class players play the game at a level I had never seen before.
“I watched us win the title and win at Wembley for the double in Kenny Dalglish’s first season as player-manager. It was incredible.
“Watching them every day was so exciting but it was also educational.
“It definitely gave me the platform to go on and have a career and it showed me what that winning mentality was like.”
It’s an insight into the almost identical opportunity that awaits Castlederg lad Bradley, who has been quickly tied down by the Reds after an impressive first season on a scholarship deal.
While the timescale has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, it won’t be long before Jurgen Klopp and the club’s senior team will relocate from their Melwood training base to the Kirkby Academy, to work side by side with Bradley and his fellow teenage hopefuls.
When that happens, he’ll be
even closer to the “blueprint”, as Magilton refers to him; Trent Alexander-arnold.
It’s only a few years since the Scouser was in Bradley’s position — playing right-back for the Under-18s and dreaming of greater things.
“Conor’s constantly looking to improve and he has an opportunity to do that every day he’s at Liverpool,” said Magilton.
“There’s no doubt he wants it and he now has an unbelievable chance to watch Trent and to ask the questions, ‘Why Trent and what did he do?’
“These are the sort of things that you think about when, like Conor, you have that ambition to get into the first team.”
Magilton has been there. Back in the late ’80s, he was an aspiring midfielder named captain of the Liverpool reserve team and watching every move of the likes of Ray Houghton, Jan Mjolby and Ronnie Whelan.
Just six months after signing, he was brought by Dalglish with the first-team squad on a pre-season tour of Scandinavia and Germany.
“When I came home for the summer, I didn’t stop,” he explained, shedding further light on the mindset needed to reach the top. “I trained all summer and it was probably the fittest I’ve ever been in my life.
“I hit the ground running. I had a brilliant pre-season.”
He would make his first friendly appearances on that tour and, still aged only 17, seemed to be on track.
It was then that he discovered the next step on the road to the top.
“When I came home from the tour, I got absolutely battered by everyone,” he laughed.
“It was a character, resilience thing. They all wanted to make sure I didn’t get too big for my boots.
“I began to understand the club and the pressure of working out how to win games when the opposition were desperate to stop us.
“Learning all these things was absolutely huge.”
Magilton would go on to be named as an unused substitute for the firsts, including in both the 1988 and 1990 Charity Shields.
Within a couple of months of the latter, he was called into Dalglish’s office.
“I’m thinking, ‘This is it’,” he recalled. “I was playing out of my skin and the boss wanted a chat. I was wondering how I’d get my family over to see my debut.
“Then Kenny said he had accepted a bid from Oxford. That was the bubble burst. I got black bin liners, stuck my clothes in them and away I went.”
It’s the thin line of making the grade and not. It’s timing, it’s circumstance.
Larmour, who arrived at Anfield four years after Magilton’s departure but, in his own words, got “nowhere near” as close to the senior side, said: “It doesn’t matter what level you’re at, to me it’s down to being in the right place at the right time.
“It’s down to the manager seeing something in you and giving you that chance.”
The day will likely come when Bradley gets called in for a chat. It’ll go one of two ways.
Magilton said: “It’s about quality, having that bit extra. With money in the game, Liverpool can go and buy that so you have to be exceptional. The Academy is about producing players but they have to be of the right quality to push on.”
So there’s work to be done. As scout Ferguson regularly reminds him, Bradley has a long way to go to reach the summit.
And yet every step, as Larmour is quick to remind him, is a privilege.
“I always felt like I was one of the lucky ones,” he said of his own two years at Anfield, playing alongside the likes of Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen in an FA Youth Cup-winning side. “I’ve known players better than me that didn’t get the same opportunities I did.
“Nowadays the young players are doing the same training as the first team, eating the same diets and are given the best chance to make it.
“If Conor can just get that bit of luck then you never know, he could be the one to get the break that nobody else has managed to get.”
With tireless effort, a sprinkling of quality and a touch of fortune, Sammy Smyth’s long-standing record will, by someone, some day, be brought to an end.
It’s just unlikely to be on a relegation-confirming afternoon at Bloomfield Road.