January 24, 2009, is a date former Manchester United right-back Richard Eckersley will never forget.
Having joined United as a nine-year-old, he achieved his lifelong dream of making his first-team debut, stepping off the bench at Old Trafford. United were facing Tottenham Hotspur in an FA Cup fourth round tie and were 2-1 up when Sir Alex Ferguson ordered the Salford-born defender to get ready.
Replacing Fabio, Eckersley came on after 53 minutes, taking his place in a team that featured Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo and Dimitar Berbatov, and helped United progress to the next round.
“It was an awe-inspiring kind of moment,” Eckersley told the Manchester Evening News. “I was playing with people I had watched growing up and I was giving them the ball. It was a really surreal moment.”
Eckersley was knocking on the door of the first-team at Old Trafford at a period when the squad was stacked with household names. It was the commitment, dedication and desire of the likes of Ryan Giggs and Scholes that inspired Eckersley to follow in their footsteps.
“You hear stories about them when you’re growing up and coming through the academy,” he recalled. “You heard about Roy Keane, Giggs, Scholes and their professionalism. You hear in the academy that this is what these players are like and how they got to that stage.
“When you get into that space, are training and mingling with these players, and seeing their dedication and their passion, then you get the first-hand experience of what it takes to be a footballer at that level for that many years. It was really inspiring and, for the most part, all the things that I learnt there I have taken into my life now.”
Eckersley, now 35, only made four senior appearances during his United career but does have a League Cup winners medal to show for his time at Old Trafford. Despite not playing a single minute of the Reds’ run to the 2009 final, he made the substitutes bench at Wembley, having caught Ferguson’s eye with a strong performance in a reserve fixture against Manchester City a few days earlier.
Eckersley travelled to Wembley not knowing he had made the squad. He added: “It was either me or Fabio [in the squad]. You can kind of work it out because if they’re taking 20 players, two players are not going to be in the squad.
“I was only 20 at the time, and I was only just breaking in, so I was thinking to myself, ‘I am probably not going to be on the bench’. I just walked into the dressing room at Wembley and my shirt was hanging up, meaning I knew I was on the bench. If your shirt is not hanging up, you know you’re not in the squad.
Although he did not make it off the bench, it was arguably the pinnacle of Eckersley’s United career. But later that year he made the decision to leave Old Trafford and join newly-promoted Burnley. It was a decision he was left regretting, as his time at Turf Moor yielded just four appearances and a cluster of loan spells.
“I think the decision to leave United was probably too early for me,” he said. “I think I probably should have stayed on and developed at Carrington under the coaches that I was already working with, because I was making steady progress.
“I think the jump from the cusp of one of the world’s greatest teams, you could say at that time, to Burnley, who had just got promoted but were going to be a struggling team in the Premier League, was a massive jump and a massive education for me, in terms of what is men’s football and what is it like to play with players that haven’t had the pedigree that people at United had.
“It was a huge shift from where I was at United and the standards that we were setting with professionalism, the facilities and all the kinds of things that we had. You were basically looked after to the nth degree. Then going somewhere like Burnley – and no disrespect to Burnley – they were just in a different headspace.“
“They were obviously not a Champions League winner, they had not won the Premier League, and they did not have the money that United had. It was just a completely different experience and in hindsight I think it would been sensible for me to stay on [at United].
“I think the decisions that I made were based on promises that weren’t given, essentially. Nothing in football is guaranteed, but I think, in hindsight, I should have stayed on at United. I think I regretted it when I made the decision.”
After spending time on loan at Plymouth Argyle, Bradford City and Bury, Eckersley moved to the other side of the Atlantic in April 2011, joining Toronto. He initially joined the MLS club on loan before the move was made permanent the following January.
“I was desperate just to play and desperate to enjoy football, because at the time I wasn’t enjoying football,” he said. “I was playing in League Two, I was going on loan to Bradford, Bury and places like that.
“Even though it was competitive football, I just wasn’t enjoying the football side of things because I enjoyed playing football and how we used to play at United – and that was the standard, in my mind, that I was wanting.
“I was just desperate to play football again, and I went on loan to Plymouth and we were in a bit of a relegation battle. I played under a manager called Paul Mariner, who really liked me and really liked how I played. He got the general manager’s job at Toronto, and that is how the move came about to North America.
“He said come over to the MLS, play for six or seven months on loan and enjoy the football. That is exactly what I did. He took me over and I loved it.
“I loved living by myself, I loved the culture, I loved the relaxation around football and people just enjoying the football. Don’t get me wrong, the football was a very physical league, going here, there and everywhere, but I just felt that it was such an enjoyable time for me as a player, to enjoy just focusing on football and also off the pitch as well, learning to live by myself and on my own.
“I have people doing it all the time,” he admitted with a chuckle. “There is actually a charity match this Sunday. My wife is pregnant at the minute and she is due to give birth to our third child at any moment, so I am having to say to people that I can’t do this charity match.
“But people come into the shop all the time asking if I can play in this charity match, can you come and join our team at night, and I am just like, after a long day in the shop or at my other company, I am a little bit knackered. I just want to go home, put my kids to bed, and then probably go to bed myself.
“I don’t really want to play football afterwards. I do play every now and again down on the astroturf at the local school, but it is very fleeting, essentially.”
