I definitely remember the stira t the time this lad signed for Spurs. can't say I've given the lad a thought since, but some fascinating insights in here. As for the jacky Charlton reference - hmmmmm

Boy wonder ends up at Kettering

Bill Bradshaw Sunday April 29, 2001 The Observer

Chances are you won't have heard of Shaun Murray. Or if you have, you may have forgotten him. Murray was going to be the next big thing as the finest young footballer of his generation and the most gifted Geordie since Bobby Charlton. He played in the same Northumberland side as Alan Shearer when no one had heard of Shearer.

Murray was the star, the hub of England Schoolboys' midfield. Just like Michael Owen a decade later, the world was at Murray's feet. And so were the offers from clubs desperate to sign him. So desperate that they offered deals that flouted all the rules. All that could be legitimately be offered in the mid-Eighties, when Murray was a schoolboy sensation, was a bog-standard two-year apprenticeship. He was offered more - much, much more.

Last week BBC1 screened Football's Dream Factory about the current illicit candy on offer to today's generation of talented teenies. Murray could have written the script - a better script. Now, at 31, when contemporaries such as Shearer are facing the prospect of finishing in the game, the one-time wunderkind has just joined Conference club Kettering on loan from Notts County.

On the face of it, his dream is all but over and a rude awakening perhaps all that remains. It was very different 16 years ago. At the time his father was on strike, a colliery worker in the North-East caught up in the middle of the bitter miners-versus-Thatcher strife of 1984-85. And certain clubs were throwing mouth-watering offers at the prodigy. Shades of Billy Elliott, but for London dance academies read Spurs followed keenly by Manchester United and Ipswich, to name but three.

'I would have loved to have signed for Newcastle,' Murray told me at his detached home near Nottingham. 'But they weren't offering anything - only the absolute minimum two-year apprenticeship. I did listen to what Newcastle had to say. 'Jack Charlton was manager and he told me the way he liked to play - "one-twos with God" - and it was obvious I wasn't going to be going there. I had people coming up to me all the time with offers, not just scouts who I knew, but others who I'd never met. I left it all to my dad and tried to concentrate on the game.'

Even after a decade and a half, literally a lifetime for a player, Murray is reluctant to be specific but he concedes that both United and Spurs made lucrative offers - and far beyond what was legitimate. Spurs courted him, had him down for weekends when he could train with the first team and play with the youth side. He was sold, almost literally, on White Hart Lane. 'Manchester United offered more', he says. 'but I went for Spurs.' There was talk on the football grapevine of £100,000 for signing which brings a shake of the head but not a complete denial. 'I didn't get that sort of money for signing at 16,' he says. 'It was all in the contract. I only had to be a YTS trainee for six months and then I'd be guaranteed a pro deal until I was 21 - five years. And there were signing-on fees if I stayed. I didn't have to sweat and worry about finishing a two-year apprenticeship at 18 and wonder whether or not I'd get offered full professional terms. It was all sorted out when I signed.' Any extra goodies? 'My dad got a car, which was very nice at the time,' he says. 'And I got a "lumper" - a brown envelope with a wad of cash inside.' And so that was that. England's finest schoolboy talent was on the road to still more fame and even bigger fortunes. Except that it never happened.

Two years later and the kid they all wanted was knocking on manager Terry Venables' door. Not to find out if he'd get a pro contract - that was already set in stone - but to ask why he wasn't in a first-team squad. 'I saw other youngsters getting a chance but not me,' Murray says. 'I was upset. I thought, "That should be me." I cringe to think of it now. These days youth players never speak to a manager, let alone demand to know why they're not in the first team. 'Part of it was that I was quite big for my age at 14 and 15. After that, I didn't grow much while my contemporaries kept on getting bigger. I don't think I suffered because I was in a comfort-zone of not having to battle for a pro deal with the other trainees. It's just that I was not so outstanding as I got older and the expected move into the first team didn't come.' The next call was from agent Eric Hall. He told Murray that Portsmouth were keen to sign him. 'I didn't know than that Eric Hall was a pal of Terry Venables,' he says. 'Nor did I know that Terry was big pals with Portsmouth chairman Jim Gregory. I agreed to sign but never the got the money I should have done from either end. I think I got stitched up a bit there.'

And that was Murray's last real tilt at fame. He had never made Spurs first team yet the club pocketed a £100,000 fee from his sale in 1989 - perhaps recouping their investment. A successful spell at Pompey could have seen him shooting for the moon again, but it brought him only occasional first-team football and ultimately desperate heartache under manager Jim Smith, prompting him to consider 'packing in the game and heading back home to Newcastle'. Instead he was rescued in 1993 by league new boys Scarborough. He started enjoying his football again and when chairman Geoffrey Richmond went to Bradford, he took Murray with him. There he stayed for four years, helping them to Division One, before a move to Sam Allardyce's Notts County. The dreams of glory and big money, however, were long gone.

'I was just earning a living,' Murray says. Now Allardyce is at Bolton and County have a different manager, Jocky Scott. He is the latest to question Murray's ability to impose himself on a game. So he now trains twice a week - the non-leaguer's staple - and plays in Kettering's shop window. 'I'm doing a favour to Carl Shutt, the manager who's a pal from my Bradford days. And he's doing me a favour,' is how Murray sees it. 'I think I can still do a job at a decent level and I want to play until I'm 35. Unlike the top players today, I can't afford not to work. I'll have to get some sort of job after I finish.' Murray's now building for that future with his wife, Julie, and sons Sam, five, and three-year-old Danny.

How would he react if either boy showed promise as a player? 'I'd not mind them following me - but Julie's dead set against it,' he says. He is remarkably free of bitterness or envy. Does he have any regrets ? 'No, not really. I did my best. I don't think I've been a failure because you can be out of this game with one injury, can't you? I've had a good career and at 31 I'm still playing. It's just that my career hasn't matched some of the expectations when I was a very good young player. I remember my Mum saying when I was going to Spurs, "You've made it, son." Even at 15 I tried to tell her that I hadn't. So many things can happen.' And money.

Was he or his family seduced by the money on offer? And what advice would he give to today's kids being chased by scouts and agents? He considers. 'I think if the money is there, you have to take it. Advice other than that is hard but I'll tell you this, I took out four endowment plans pushed at me by an agent when I was 19. I wondered what the hell I was doing, but now they'll set me up with a nice little nest-egg. I'd tell kids today to do the same. 'I'd also tell youngsters to be level-headed. If you appear to have it all at 15, don't expect it to happen. You have to make it happen. As for money, you really do have to take it. The next game could be your last.'

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2001

Answers

he promised so much

got kicked into touch ...

(wahey I'm a poet - and never even knew it !!)

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2001

Loony, where'd you get this from, the reason I ask is that I saw part of the same(?) article in a Singapore newspaper (syndicated?), yesterday?

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2001

www.footballunlimited.com I think it is. You know, the Guardian site from which you can access the Fiver

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2001

I have never been so impressed by a perfomance as I was when I saw Murray play for Northumberland (or Newcastle) in a pre match game, I think before the Brighton promotion game. There were four sides from Newastle, Durham, Teeside and Wearside and he was in a different class. I knew I'd seen the future.

I was so impressed I went to see England schoolboys play at Forest a few weeks later. (I lived in Nottingham). He was a year younger than the rest but still looked good, although not out of this world.

I was so upset when he went to Spurs, and always felt he was the fourth forgetten member of Waddle, Beardsley, Gazza. I was really surprised when he went to Portsmouth and then he disappeared for a while.

Very sad.

-- Anonymous, May 04, 2001