Tackle was an act of retribution and cost me chance of a career at United, the club I loved
but he knew he had lost the “fine margin” that turns a good player into a great one.
By the time Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, Butt and Neville had played their way into United folklore in the historic Treble-winning season of 1998-99, Thornley had moved on to Huddersfield.
He had brief spells with Aberdeen, Blackpool and Bury and several non-League clubs, as well as a nine-month spell of partying and boozing which he enjoyed at the time but was clearly an escape from inner demons.
No one will ever know if Thornley would have fulfilled his enormous potential, but he would have liked to have had the opportunity to find out.
“I know it’s all speculation because what we are talking about is potential,” he says.
“But I would just have loved to have given it a go for one full season. I’d love to have played 40 games for United without having had an injury at 18, just to see. There is genuinely no jealousy attached to the fact so many of the lads I was playing with at the time went on to have glorious careers. I’m proud of all of them and they are all still good friends.
“It is the fact that I never got the opportunity to try to go along on the ride with them or, more to the point, that somebody took that opportunity away from me.”
After spells as a tiler and manager of a Chinese restaurant, Thornley has come full circle and is now working back at United for the club’s in-house TV station and as a hospitality host.
But every time he gazes across the Theatre of Dreams, he could be forgiven for thinking of what might have been.
TACKLED: The Class of 92 Star Who Never Got to Graduate (Pitch Publishing) by Ben Thornley and Dan Poole.