Carra: My Autobiography Read Online Free PDF Page A

targeted by opponents, and if I ever felt I was being provoked, I rarely bit my tongue or controlled my temper. Yet again, the conduct I'd witnessed standing on the sidelines had been embedded into my repertoire. The Sunday League was always a scally zone.

At the start of my Merton Villa career we'd regularly lose 7–0, but we improved every season. Medals began to arrive, and personal recognition came with them. Soon we were the best team in the Bootle and Litherland District. We also won a national tournament held in Southport and moved into the stronger Walton and Kirkdale League, playing the best sides in Liverpool.

Our rivals were a team called Pacific, who had a player everyone recognized as a top prospect, Jamie Cassidy. Jamie would have been a certain Liverpool regular if he hadn't suffered so much with injuries. He damaged his cruciate and broke his leg just after breaking into the reserves, and never fully recovered. Their striker, John Murphy, also went on to score lots of goals for Blackpool. They were a formidable side, and they beat us to the league title, but then we met each other in the Sunday League Cup Final.

That game, held at the Long Lane playing fields in Fazakerley, meant as much to me when I was twelve as the moment Andriy Shevchenko fluffed his penalty in the 2005 Champions League Final. We won 5–4, and I scored twice. As Everton midfielder Stuart McCall presented the trophy, I revelled in a collective sense of achievement. Good as I was, it had needed a monumental team effort to win that cup. I was proud of the whole side's efforts, not only my own. Another box in the 'things to do to become a top footballer' had been ticked.

After McCall handed me my medal, I just muttered 'Thanks' and walked back to my seat. If he'd wanted to chat longer, I could have listed all his playing statistics, how many goals he'd scored, and maybe even offered a bit of advice on what more he could be doing to live up to the standards of the great midfielder he'd replaced, Paul Bracewell – a player who inspired my gelled haircut at one time. This is because when I wasn't playing football, I wanted to be reading or talking about it.

Every youngster in Liverpool likes to keep a stack of magazines under the bed for some quiet late-night entertainment. Shoot was my choice. Its arrival every Saturday morning was pencilled into my mind's diary. I'd collect my order from the newsagent and read every sentence. I wasn't interested in pinning posters on the wall, but in finding out any detail about every top player. I'd keep each edition for years, so I'd always have a private library for later reference. Today, I'd test my memory for games and goalscorers against anyone in the country. I studied results, fixtures and players in such depth I'm now able to answer many football trivia questions instantly. If I wasn't a footballer, I'd have gone on Mastermind , my specialist subject ' Shoot magazine during the 1980s'.

One edition from spring 1988 still traumatizes me. I was convinced Everton had signed Ian Rush from Juventus because he was on the cover of Shoot wearing the blue kit. I ran home shouting to everyone, 'We've signed Ian Rush!', only to read the article and discover it was an April Fool joke. I wasn't laughing, and graduated to the more mature 90 Minutes shortly after.

If I ever met one of the professional players featured in the pages of Shoot , I wasn't as surprised as some youngsters would have been because I was lucky enough to become accustomed to it. I was training twice a week at Liverpool, at the Vernon Sangster Leisure Centre – which is due to be demolished to make way for the new stadium on Stanley Park – and was used to seeing the likes of Dalglish and Everton's manager Howard Kendall on the line during schoolboy games, watching their own sons. Kendall's presence would always prompt me to try to find an extra yard. Liverpool had spotted me, but privately it was Everton I still hoped to join.

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