Best local players to never make it?



He was very young so hard to say for definite but Im going to say a kid I went to school with - Iain Eckert. The name might ring a bell to people my age from South Shields as he was absolutely brilliant.

Their were alway scouts watching his games and all the talk was he was going to make it as a pro. He was only 11/12 when he was on his bike and tried to cross the John Reid Road and got hit by two cars. He was in a coma for months with the likes of Mick Harford recording messages for him.

Anyway he came out the coma but was more or less paralysed on his left side. Career over before it began but he still played football with us and no one could get the ball of him.
 
RokerLegend said:
He was very young so hard to say for definite but Im going to say a kid I went to school with - Iain Eckert. The name might ring a bell to people my age from South Shields as he was absolutely brilliant.

Their were alway scouts watching his games and all the talk was he was going to make it as a pro. He was only 11/12 when he was on his bike and tried to cross the John Reid Road and got hit by two cars. He was in a coma for months with the likes of Mick Harford recording messages for him.

Anyway he came out the coma but was more or less paralysed on his left side. Career over before it began but he still played football with us and no one could get the ball of him.
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Played in Holland with him for South Shields in 1989, we won the tournament, he was a brilliant player. He had that accident not long after we came back, real shame.
 
Kitch said:
Ronnie Cowie and Charlie Grose.
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I used to drink in Silksworth occasionally with Charlie Grose, and his mate Jack Wilkinson. There was a Ronnie who came in and chatted to them occasionally, not sure if it's the same one, but he was on a team with them. Jack always said he used to just bounce it off Charlie into the goal. Charlie was a superb forward player by all accounts. Didn't take much for them to go all misty-eyed about playing for Ryhope in the 60s and when they got to the first round proper of the FA Cup and played against Workington (1967 or thereabouts). Loved listening to their stories of the Wearside League and working in the yards etc.
 
Ronnie Iffraff. Great potential. Had everything. A reet waster though. Bone feckin idle.
RokerLegend said:
He was very young so hard to say for definite but Im going to say a kid I went to school with - Iain Eckert. The name might ring a bell to people my age from South Shields as he was absolutely brilliant.

Their were alway scouts watching his games and all the talk was he was going to make it as a pro. He was only 11/12 when he was on his bike and tried to cross the John Reid Road and got hit by two cars. He was in a coma for months with the likes of Mick Harford recording messages for him.

Anyway he came out the coma but was more or less paralysed on his left side. Career over before it began but he still played football with us and no one could get the ball of him.
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God that’s awful.
 
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Many fledgling players have had their careers finished by injury. Willie McPheat, Bobby Park and Kieron Brady-saw enough of them to convince me that they all could have had careers at the very highest level.
 

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