Twenty five years after scoring twice for Leeds United against Chelsea, the Dubliner explains how he was shaped by lessons learned at Elland Road.
David Sneyd STEPHEN McPHAIL can see things as clearly now as he did on the pitch at Stamford Bridge 25 years ago.“I don’t actually remember striking the ball,” the former Leeds United midfielder says of his first goal in English football against Chelsea in December 1999. “But everything else about it is still in my head.”
Leeds visit Chelsea in the fifth round of the FA Cup this evening, a quarter of a century on. They have not won in that corner of west London since.“I see it with my own son now, he can get bored watching full games, social media kind of kills it because everything gets clipped up and goes online. They see the goals or whatever but the key moments and where you learn about the game are all within the smaller details of the game,” McPhail says.
McPhail is 44 now and sporting director at Shamrock Rovers. His son, Joel, is emerging through the academy there and, recently, captainted the Republic of Ireland U15s.But Leeds stays with him. The Leeds first team were training one pitch over and needed an extra body 10 minutes into the session.He was barely over from Home Farm and Hart saw the fear in his eyes. “He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. He told me ‘you deserve to be over there with them now go and show how fucking good you are’. He pushed me over to the pitch and I will never forget that moment. Jesus, I can see it now, those words stick with me 30 years later.
“Training would be over. People would be heading home and he’d drag me back out into the stadium. The two of us would be alone on the pitch pinging balls across pitch to each other. I was a kid, it was incredible. There would be times he was doing it just to break in some new boots,” McPhail says.