Hanging up The Boots

 The board has gone up for injury time, it’s 1-1 and the game will be remembered for a couple of superb goals from Xabi Alonso and Patrick Viera. Didi Hamman has done what he does and won us a free kick close to our own goal line and as Chris Kirkland prepares to launch the ball forward for the last time we begin to walk down from the back of the Kop towards the exits. Kirkland’s punt finds Harry Kewell’s head and then drops in front of Neil Mellor 25 yards from goal and he smashes it into the bottom corner past Jens Lehman. Pandemonium ensues on the terraces, Sol Campbell looks distraught on the pitch. By the time the celebrations in the stand begin to calm down we’re somehow about ten rows further forward than we were before the wonder strike. A quick chorus of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and then the journey home, filled with the optimism created by beating a great side as our new manager still finds his feet in the Premier League. These few minutes are one of my clearest memories in all my years of watching football at Anfield.

 Yesterday Neil Mellor announced his retirement at 29 years old due to a knee injury and I’m sure all Liverpool fans are gutted for him. He was very promising as a young player at Liverpool and seemed to score in every youth team and reserve match he played in, leading to plenty of calls for him to be brought into the first team. He was a strong player and a good finisher, probably lacking the speed that most top strikers have but he still proved himself to be a decent player every time he was called upon. Without his contribution against Olympiakos there would have been no Istanbul, and every Liverpool supporter will remain eternally grateful for the goal he scored that night at the Kop end within minutes of replacing Milan Baros.

 Footballers are often criticised for the amount of money they earn and the way they behave as if they don’t have a care in the world, but this isn’t all of them. It is a short career and here is a man retiring at only 29. He’s scored vital goals in the Premier League and the Champions League for Liverpool before finding a good home at Preston, a decent club I’ve always liked (obviously apart from a short spell under Alex Ferguson’s son) but I’d be surprised if he’s set for life. At his age most people will still have thirty five years of their working lives ahead of them and plenty of experience behind them. Footballers who finish at this age don’t often have anything else to fall back on. The top players will make enough money to set them up for life but this certainly isn’t true of every professional footballer and sometimes people should think about what they say before they make a sweeping criticism of everyone in the sport, it can be a great career, but it can also be very hard and very unfair.

 I hope Neil Mellor finds work within football, his managers and team mates have always been highly complimentary of him and he has good experience so I’m sure he would make it as a coach. His time as a youngster at Liverpool and the weight of expectation coming through the ranks after home grown strikers like Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen would give him a really good perspective on training up and coming talents, not just with the football side of things but how to deal with the pressures of being highly though of at a big club as well. It’s a shame when injury forces any player to retire (Roy Keane excluded), especially one who has provided Liverpool fans with good memories, maybe not as many as other players, but certainly ones just as important.