“I remember loads about the game. But I find it hard to believe it’s 40 years ago,” says Paul Simpson, as the 40th anniversary of his professional debut creeps up on him this weekend.
Simpson, the Carlisle United manager, was 16 years and 68 days old when he was thrown into Manchester City’s top-flight team for a home game against Coventry City.
It was the first game in an 808-match career for the man now known as the wise head responsible for guiding his home-city club’s fortunes.
Back in October 1982, Simpson was an aspiring apprentice at Maine Road, certainly not expecting to become one of City’s youngest-ever players early into the 1982/3 First Division season.
“It was just thrown on me on the Friday,” he recalls. “I went into the first team changing room where the teamsheets used to get put up, and there was the first team [listed] and the Lancashire League team, which was our under-18s.
“I looked at the Lancashire League one first and wasn’t on it, and thought I’d been dropped for that. One of the lads pointed out I was on the first team.
“At the time, I think we only had 12 on the teamsheet. We didn’t do any team shape or anything like that, and I was just told I was going to start.
“It’s all a blur at the time, you don’t really know what’s going on – it all happened so quickly. Next thing you know, the game was finished and I was sat on my front doorstep in Belle Vue South having my photographs taken on the Sunday morning the next day, because it had gone well.”
Simpson had been on City’s books as a schoolboy having turned down overtures from Bobby Robson at Ipswich Town. His introduction to the team was a surprising one, early in a campaign which City had started reasonably before suffering back-to-back defeats.
Simmo lined up with some senior players who had starred for City in previous successes. In front of 25,105 supporters on Saturday, October 2, the young Cumbrian with the canny left foot played his part in a 3-2 victory, although not in the way he might have anticipated.
“I still remember it – probably the one and only header I made in football,” he smiles. “I nodded one back at the far post for David Cross to score the winner. I don’t think I’ve headed the ball since.
“It was good...a really special day. And really good that my mum and dad were there to see it as well.”
Cross’s goal followed City strikes by Graham Baker and Tommy Caton, with Jim Melrose and Garry Thompson replying for Coventry. It ensured a winning start to first-team live for the Carlisle teenager.
It was not quite enough to make Simpson City’s youngest player – Glyn Pardoe, at 15 years and 341, held that record from an appearance against Birmingham City in 1962 – but it was still an early ambition prematurely fulfilled.
“When you’re growing up as a kid and wanting to be a professional footballer – which was long as I could ever think, that’s what I wanted to be – to get that opportunity to play at 16 was just enormous,” Simpson says.
“It all happened so quickly that I never got a chance to be nervous. I’ve always been somebody who can sleep well anyway, so I slept well that night in my digs, no issue.
“I think it was probably more exciting for the rest of the apprentices to see that one of us had actually got into the first team, and it became real.
“I’ll be honest, I was not considered the best of our apprentices; other players were better footballers than me. I just happened to be the one that got given the chance and was thankful for that chance.
“I know I got that chance because John Bond chucked me in thinking it would give him a bit of breathing space. Sometimes if you put younger players in it can take the pressure off. I fully get that and I’m still thankful for it. I did thank John Bond before he passed away, for giving me that debut.”
Simpson’s education accelerated the day he suddenly shared the turf with some of City’s household names of the time. “You’re looking at proper senior players like Asa Hartford, Dennis Tueart, David Cross, Tommy Caton, Ray Ranson, Bobby McDonald, Paul Power, Alex Williams…these are players whose boots I used to clean, make the tea for them in the morning,” he says.
“They were proper stars to me. To get the opportunity to be on the same pitch as them was absolutely brilliant.”
So began a first-team path at City that lasted until 1988, before Simpson’s journey took him on to Oxford United, Derby County, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Blackpool, Rochdale and latterly Carlisle. By the time he introduced himself as a substitute for the title-winning Blues at Stockport County’s Edgeley Park for his 808th and last professional appearance on May 6, 2006, a 24-year career had unfolded.
In management and coaching, Simpson has worked with a number of young players himself. In the very recent past he has given two 17-year-olds (Ryan Carr and Nic Bollado) their Carlisle debuts.
The man who was a teenage tyro in the game himself had little reservations in doing so.
“I’m fully aware we’ve got lots of players in this club, and that’s why I always try to put a full bench out – I don’t believe in only putting 16 on the teamsheet and embarrassing the club that we’ve got loads of injuries and ‘you haven’t given me enough players...’ That doesn’t wash with me.
“If you need to fill the bench with players, I think it’s great experience to put young players on. What I would say is there’s times where they’re on the bench and I’ve got no intentions of putting them on because I don’t think they’re ready and it wouldn’t be right on them.
“But if I think a player’s ready to play and can go on and do themselves justice and help us, I would have absolutely no hesitation in putting on a 16-year-old.”
There are times when it increasingly seems a young person’s game, given Arsenal recently gave a Premier League debut to 15-year-old Ethan Nwaneri, and in Northern Ireland, Glenavon’s Christopher Atherton became the UK’s youngest ever first-team player at 13 years and 329 days.
It all leads Simpson to go back to 1982, when it all began for him. “You start out wanting to be, in my day, an apprentice, then you want to get a pro contract, be in the first team, and stay playing for as long as you can,” he says.
“In those days you talked about the idea of getting to 35, then you’d done really well.
“Here I am at 56 still involved in the game – and that was the starting point for me. It was brilliant. I’ve had some brilliant days since as well.”
The Man City team when Simmo made his debut: Williams, Ranson, Power, Baker, Bond, Caton, Tueart, Reeves, Cross, Hartford, Simpson.
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