I was reminiscing over on the Barstool with The British Cowboy the other day about some of my happy memories of watching live football matches - most of them from back in the mid-70s, when, for two or three years, my dad bought me a season ticket to see the local side, Hereford Utd.
I have celebrated on here before the joy of being present for the greatest sporting moment in history.
Another of the most vivid pleasures of those years was seeing a young lad named Kevin Sheedy make his debut for us. We were lucky enough to have quite a few characterful and very good players in those years (the moustachioed goalkeeper, Tommy Hughes, who was the Welsh international No.1 for a while; and the dogged midfielder Terry Paine, who spent his swansong years with us after setting an unapproachable record for English League appearances with Southampton [between them and us, I think he notched up a final total of 824 - which I'm sure must still be the record]; or the mercurial striker, Eric Redrobe, a great crowd favourite at Hereford even in his declining years; or indeed young David Icke, who was understudy to Tommy in goal before arthritis brought his career to a premature end and he reinvented himself as a prophetic loon); but Sheedy was the best, quite plainly a class above anybody else we'd ever seen playing in that division. He was only 16 or 17 when he first played for us, and during his first couple of seasons we were very conservative in using him - because he was still just a skinny kid. But once he'd turned 18, he was becoming a regular first choice on the left of midfield. And that, of course, meant that he started attracting a lot of attention further afield. Several top clubs sent scouts to watch him, and he was being courted to play international football for the Republic of Ireland. It was sadly obvious that we wouldn't be able to hang on to him for very long.
When he signed for Liverpool that season, our disappointment at losing our brightest young prospect was balanced by a pride that he was going to such a big name club. We fondly imagined that he'd be making national and international headlines quite soon.
But it took rather a long time to happen. Somehow or other, Kevin got on the wrong side of the Liverpool training staff and spent the next three-and-a-half years playing in their Reserves team. It was a shocking waste of an egregious talent, and might well have destroyed his confidence for good.
I have celebrated on here before the joy of being present for the greatest sporting moment in history.
Another of the most vivid pleasures of those years was seeing a young lad named Kevin Sheedy make his debut for us. We were lucky enough to have quite a few characterful and very good players in those years (the moustachioed goalkeeper, Tommy Hughes, who was the Welsh international No.1 for a while; and the dogged midfielder Terry Paine, who spent his swansong years with us after setting an unapproachable record for English League appearances with Southampton [between them and us, I think he notched up a final total of 824 - which I'm sure must still be the record]; or the mercurial striker, Eric Redrobe, a great crowd favourite at Hereford even in his declining years; or indeed young David Icke, who was understudy to Tommy in goal before arthritis brought his career to a premature end and he reinvented himself as a prophetic loon); but Sheedy was the best, quite plainly a class above anybody else we'd ever seen playing in that division. He was only 16 or 17 when he first played for us, and during his first couple of seasons we were very conservative in using him - because he was still just a skinny kid. But once he'd turned 18, he was becoming a regular first choice on the left of midfield. And that, of course, meant that he started attracting a lot of attention further afield. Several top clubs sent scouts to watch him, and he was being courted to play international football for the Republic of Ireland. It was sadly obvious that we wouldn't be able to hang on to him for very long.
When he signed for Liverpool that season, our disappointment at losing our brightest young prospect was balanced by a pride that he was going to such a big name club. We fondly imagined that he'd be making national and international headlines quite soon.
But it took rather a long time to happen. Somehow or other, Kevin got on the wrong side of the Liverpool training staff and spent the next three-and-a-half years playing in their Reserves team. It was a shocking waste of an egregious talent, and might well have destroyed his confidence for good.
Eventually he managed to escape, securing a transfer to their bitter cross-town adversaries, Everton. There he quickly made up for lost time, becoming a lynchpin of the great side that was one of the dominant forces in English football through the mid-80s. He had possibly the sweetest left foot of any player I've ever seen (the only serious competition would be the great Liam Brady, whom he understudied and eventually replaced in the Irish team; although Liam's distribution was sublime, I think Kevin might possibly have had a small edge in his delivery from dead-ball situations); and for a while there, during Everton's glory days, he was racking up a goal-scoring rate that many outright strikers would have been more than happy with.
In one of the first Liverpool-Everton derby matches he played in after his career-saving move, he scored with this belter of a free-kick - and then ran half a lap of the pitch cheerfully flicking the Vs at all the Liverpool supporters. It was obviously a very cathartic moment for him! And it is still a moment much beloved of Everton fans, who feel a vehement hostility to their usually much more successful and admired Merseyside rivals.
This is a superb goal!
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