Billy Kenny, the former Everton midfielder nicknamed the “Goodison Gazza”, has recalled the trial he spent at Manchester United in 1988, describing how Alex Ferguson made him feel special and how the visit gave him an early sight of two players who would go on to define the club. The recollections form part of an extract from his autobiography.
Kenny’s introduction to the United first team was engineered by Brian Kidd, who quietened a room to draw attention to his presence with the words: “Lads, this is Billy from up the road.” Eric Harrison had driven him to The Cliff that day, and Kenny was still starstruck as he took in the famous faces around him — Paul McGrath, Mark Hughes, Bryan Robson, Kevin Moran and Norman Whiteside among them. The first-teamers teased him about being a scouser, and Brian McClair followed up by asking whether he supported Everton or Liverpool. Kenny’s smile and nod drew the reply: “Good answer … Ye’ll dee well ‘ere laddie.” Kenny identified the Scottish voice as the man who had just become the first United player to score more than 20 league goals for the club since George Best in the 1960s.
Ferguson then greeted him in an office at the end of a short, narrow corridor. The manager leapt up from his chair to hug him, repeating “This is ma boy, this is ma boy”, and asked about Kenny’s trip with Liverpool to Wembley for a cup final. He also told the youngster that he had watched 20 minutes of him playing for Liverpool schoolboys against Salford, after Harrison had watched him several times. Kenny was told simply to go out and enjoy himself.
During the trial, the few dozen trialists were split up and mixed in with boys who had already signed schoolboy forms, all wearing Manchester United training kit that Kidd told Kenny he could keep. Although there were children from Brazil, Argentina and Ghana present, Kenny struck up an immediate friendship with Tommy Harrison, whom he believed to be the Scotland schoolboys captain and who arrived at United with a big reputation. Kenny later looked him up online and found he had not gone on to a long career at the top of the game, having turned United down to sign for Hearts and, Kenny thinks, played for lower-league clubs in Scotland. “There are a million and one ways to fall away,” Kenny reflected.
On the pitch, Kenny was used in central midfield in all the games, a departure from the right-midfield role he filled for Liverpool schoolboys and a surprise given that was where United had seen him play. He enjoyed the switch for the greater volume of headers, tackles and touches it brought him, and for another reason entirely: Ryan Wilson. That was the name, Kenny explains, of the player who later changed his surname to Giggs. The pair had been direct rivals in fierce clashes between their schoolboy sides, with the outcome of their duels on the wing usually deciding the result, so Kenny was delighted to line up alongside him for the first time.
In the second week of the trial, Kenny and Tommy noticed a crowd gathering near a pitch where younger children were playing. One boy kept drawing gasps from the adults watching. Kenny noticed what sounded like a cockney accent, and describes a small, skinny child with spiky blond hair who looked like a baby but did something extraordinary every time he received the ball, with touch, technique, balance and range of passing he could scarcely believe. It was his first glimpse of David Beckham, then about 12 or 13 but, in Kenny’s description, playing like a seasoned professional. He says the same could be said of Giggs, though the two were very different: Giggs lightning quick and almost impossible to stop, Beckham about technique and total control of the football.
Not everything about the experience was easy. Kenny recalls feeling massively homesick around the third week, having not heard a scouse accent for weeks, and says Manchester might as well have been Madagascar for all it felt like home. Brian Kidd, aware he was struggling, took him to his house one night, fed him steak and chips, talked about his dad and told him how perfect United would be for his development. The attention to his welfare continued to the end of the trial.
In the final week, Harrison pulled Kenny aside to tell him that “the boss” and all the staff were delighted with him, and that his father had been invited over for the last day to discuss his future. Ferguson and Kidd greeted the pair “like kings”. The manager explained that United already had plenty of great young players signed up and that Kenny was exactly what they needed in central midfield, and, knowing he was in demand, told him that choosing United would guarantee him the security of a three-year professional contract. For Kenny, those words swept away his insecurities. He says he knew instantly that he had the ability to make it as a footballer.