He was one of the most unmistakable players in football's lower divisions for over a decade, but Steve McNulty actually dropped out of the game altogether after being released by Liverpool in his 20s.
The burly centre-back was the stuff of nightmares for terrified forwards, but his schooling in Liverpool's Centre of Excellence ensured that the 6ft 1" scouser was as good with the ball at his feet as he was plucking it out of the air.
McNulty, who regularly played with and against boys two years older than him, was only six years old when he was invited by Hugh McAuley to train with the Reds - an opportunity he gladly took despite being a boyhood Evertonian.
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"I was just playing for a local team called the Brunny (Brunswick Boys). My dad and his friend Tommy set it up and we just went from there. We played in the Walton and Kirkdale League and from then there was just scouts watching games. Hugh McAuley and Harry Hodge spotted me and ask if I'd go up to Liverpool. That's how it all started on Marsh Lane," McNulty told the ECHO.
Despite being used to dominating opponents in adult football, that was not the case when he was a youngster playing against older lads, so McNulty started his football playing days at right-back. At Liverpool he was mixing with the likes of Jon Welsh - who went on to play for the first team - while in the years above him there were future hopefuls like Jon Otsemobor, Neil Mellor, Stephen Warnock and John Miles.
McNulty witnessed Steve Gerrard's rise to prominence but admitted that he never really crossed paths with the Liverpool legend as he was a few years older and was essentially fast-tracked to the first team, such was his quality. But as many others struggled to emulate the success of the future club captain McNulty takes a more pragmatic view on the road to success.
He said: "I think you've got to be honest with yourself sometimes if you're probably not good enough to go on. At the time, when you have those conversations, you've got to analyse yourself and ask are you good enough to go on an have a career with Liverpool. I'm big enough and old enough to be able to admit to myself that I wasn't good enough to go on. I was in a good position at the club and played a lot of games for the reserves but was never able to make that jump."
McNulty would initially go to the Centre of Excellence two or three times a week, before a scholarship preceded the offer of a professional contract from Academy Director Steve Heighway at the age of 17. His comfort in possession of the ball was honed at Liverpool under the club's age old pass and move philosophy - an aspect of his game that he stayed true to throughout his career.
But at the age of 21, McNulty could see that he didn't have a pathway to first team football in front of him and by the time he was released by the club he had been with since he was six years old, his desire to stay in the game was fading.
He said: "It was tough, but I think at the time I'd sort of fallen out of love with football. By now I knew I wasn't good enough to make the grade (at Liverpool), but I first went there when I was seven and left when I was 21 - 14 years of my life I spent there."
The mechanisms put in place to support young players who had been released by clubs were hardly considered satisfactory by McNulty and he is far from convinced that they are much better today. After leaving Liverpool, he was sent to the renowned Lilleshall School of Excellence for what was known as 'exit trials', but nothing came of his visit and with that, he dropped out of the game completely and never heard from Liverpool again.
"After that I'd just had enough," he said. "I got myself a job working on a van delivering furniture. I probably had no intentions of getting back into it. I'd probably seen my a*** a bit. Just disillusioned. After I finished I had a bit of money left but when that ran out I had to get a job. A friend of mine had a shop, so I just used to go in and do some deliveries on the van."
Despite his obvious disappointment, McNulty wasn't out of the game for too long before a club of very different stature to Liverpool came calling. Former Reds first-teamer Mike Marsh was manager of Northern Premier League club Burscough and was in need of a centre-back. McNulty's friend, football scout Owen Brown, recommended him to Marsh and after agreeing to sign, so started the rise of a successful football career.
After rediscovering his love for football at Burscough, McNulty moved to Ellesmere Port club Vauxhall Motors - then in the Conference North - when Brown became their manager. After two seasons with the Motormen, he was snapped up by divisional rivals Barrow on a free transfer, who were targeting promotion.
McNulty played a pivotal role when guiding the Bluebirds to promotion into the Conference Premier via the play-offs, earning him Conference North Player of the Year award in the process and a two-year contract extension at Barrow, fending off growing interest from a host of football league clubs.
McNulty believes that he was priced out of possible moves up the ladder on a couple of occasions but as he came towards the end of his Barrow contract, it was a move down a division that materialised to begin a first spell under the managership of Micky Mellon, who paid £17,000 to get him out of his current deal with Barrow.
Fleetwood were in the Conference North but not for long. McNulty captained his side to promotion via the play-offs once again, at the first time of asking. They narrowly missed out on promotion to the Football League a year later, but made no mistake the following season, winning the Conference Premier at a canter, amassing 103 points on a 29-match unbeaten run.
By now, Fleetwood had signed a striker from Halifax called Jamie Vardy and although recognised as a decent forward, McNulty did not anticipate that he was in the presence of a future Premier League winner and England international.
He said: "When we signed him, if someone had said he was going to go on an play for England, sign for Leicester and play in the Premier League, you'd have said they were telling lies. We were obviously made up for him at the time. It was great for the club and it was great for him."
Fleetwood had only been a part-time club but their subsequent promotions prompted the decision to turn them into a full-time outfit. After some persuasion by Mellon and the club chairman, McNulty agreed and finally gave up his other job. He was a full-time footballer once again.
Once in the Football League, Mellon was sacked by Fleetwood in the December and replaced by Graham Alexander. The new manager had his own philosophy and didn't see a character like McNulty in it, as he was about to find out to his cost.
"I was captain and sort of a big character in the dressing room. There was a group of scousers there again. He (Alexander) just pulled me one day and said I'd never play for the club again. He said he wanted to go in a different direction and that I had too much pull in the dressing room. He wanted shut of me and I was there for a couple more months, not playing.
"I'd obviously been promoted out of the Conference with Fleetwood and been playing well. Luton had been struggling to get out of the Conference, so it was just a mad one. One deadline day I got a phone call asking if I would be interested in signing and I ended up going down and signing for Luton in the Conference."
Possessing a bigger build than average for the modern day footballer, McNulty was nicknamed 'sumo' by supporters of his new club and throughout his career has run the gauntlet of taunts from unforgiving terraces, but it was something that he insists he was able to take in his stride, even if he admits it probably has held him back overall.
"It's never really bothered me to be fair. It's probably hindered my career a bit. Anyone who's come to a game and looked at me has probably thought 'look at him, he's not a footballer.' It might have held me back when I was at my peak for Luton or the back end of Fleetwood. I think I could have played higher - League One, bottom Championship - but people probably looked at me and thought 'no he can't'. But I believe in my own ability. My stature has held my career back and I haven't played as high as I should have and that's probably because of the way I look physically."
McNulty didn't hit the ground running and had to deal with another change of manager only weeks after joining the Hatters, but under experienced lower league boss John Still - who had admitted to McNulty that he had been tracking him as part of his scouting network anyway - Luton finished seventh before returning in the style the following season.
With McNulty by now a fan's favourite and made the club's vice-captain, he was a key component of a defence that kept 23 clean sheets and helped Luton to clinch the Conference title and return to the Football League. He was rewarded by being crowned Player of Year at Kenilworth Road and started the following year as captain.
Having signed a new deal with the Hatters, he led his side to an eighth-placed finish and was included in the League Two Team of the Year. McNulty admits that he would have happily stayed at Luton for the rest of his career before other factors came into play that saw him return to Merseyside and kick-start a new era in his career.
"Due to my daughter not being well I had to leave. It just wasn't working out. I was sad to leave. I would have stayed their for the rest of my career, I loved it that much. Gary Brabin and Owen Brown - they're good mates. They phoned me up in the summer and asked me to come home (to Tranmere). I thought it's another massive club, one of my home town teams. But John Still offered me a new contract and I decided to stay.
"Part way through the season, things happened at home and I went to him and explained the situation. He was as good as gold. A great fella, top man. Within an hour, everything was sorted and I was coming back (up north) to Tranmere. He (Still) is a proper family man himself. He looked after every single one of his players. He knew everything about you and your family life. He was really good."
After joining Rovers on loan in October 2015, McNulty signed a permanent deal on the turn of the new year. When Micky Mellon replaced Gary Brabin as Tranmere boss the following season McNulty helped Rovers make a charge for the National League title, mounting pressure on Danny Cowley's Lincoln City. They would have to settle for the play-offs and fell just short, losing 3-1 to Forest Green in the final at Wembley.
It was a game that McNulty admits they deserved to lose. He said: "On the day we were beaten by a better team. We just didn't turn up. Forest Green were better than us on the day. Going into the final, because we'd done so well in the semi-final, none of us had contemplated losing. We were probably over-confident on the day. They deservedly beat us."
Undeterred, Tranmere returned to Wembley in the play-off final 12 months later, this time against Boreham Wood. But the game couldn't have started any worse for Rovers, with full-back Liam Ridehalgh sent off inside the first minute.
"Here we go again I thought," said McNulty. "I think that year though, despite going down to 10 men we had a good bunch. We were hard to beat. We went in confident but not overly-confident that time. We knew how it felt to lose and didn't want to feel like that again so we went in better prepared. We played Boreham Wood a few weeks earlier and they footballed us off the park. Couldn't get near them. But when we went down to ten men, for some reason they went direct and that suited us. We had a good team spirit and that saw us through."
With the score locked at 1-1 James Norwood scored a late winner for Rovers that ended their three-year stint in non-league football and put the Birkenhead club back in the Football League where they belonged. McNulty's take on Rovers team spirit at the time is indicative of how the team would often perform on the pitch.
"It's probably not the correct terminology but when we were all together, we were probably all like basket cases. We all had a bit of a screw loose. The dressing room was good, it was strong. We had the likes of Jay Harris. We just had a team of cannons. They were all good footballers as well and have gone on to have good careers.
Things got even better for Tranmere the following season, when a late charge up the table led to another play-off final appearance at Wembley - their third in a row - where a last-gasp goal from Connor Jennings against Newport County took Rovers back into League One.
But Mellon's side found the going tough the following season and McNulty felt that the spirit of the team that had won a double promotion had been broken up too quickly. He said: "I think that was part of the downfall. The dressing room just got demolished. We lost all those big characters that you need.
McNulty rates James Norwood as probably the best player he played with at Tranmere, but also highly rated others including Jeff Hughes, Harris and Adam Buxton. He left Prenton Park under a cloud however, when a coaching role within Mellon's set-up failed to materialise.
"At the time I left on a sour note. I was probably a bit p***ed off. Things were promised to me that didn't materialise. He (Mellon) says it was out of his hands and I just take his word for that. I didn't speak to him for a while, but I'm back in touch with him now and speak to him on a regular basis. I'm in there now coaching the college kids. He has said to me that if the chance comes up, he will try and get me over with the first team.
"It's what I want to do. I've been in football as a job since I was 16. I'm 39 this year. It's all I know. I've had an assistant manager role at Chester and I want to become a manager myself and pass all my experience on. I think I can be a success at it. That's my next step. Any help I can get - I pick up the phone to Micky all the time, I speak to John Still, Steve Watson's been good to me. I want to stay in the game."
Looking back on his career, McNulty accepts that his time at Liverpool gave him the grounding to forge out a good living in football even it if wasn't with the Reds themselves. "It taught me a lot and developed me as a player. You were getting the best coaching you would ever get in your life. I've had a good career and been lucky enough to play in some great teams under great managers. I look back and think yes I've had a half-decent career.
"I think this is what's wrong with the game. People come through the academies and we've seen too many kids fall out the game. When they sign at these clubs they get the best of everything, they don't have to lift a finger and I think when they do get released by the top academies, they should want to go into non-league football. It's an eye-opener. Part of the scholarship should be to get sent out for a couple of months at a time to go and play in the Conference and we won't have as many young lads falling out the game as we do."
When asked what advice he would give to any young player who has got ambitions for a career in the game, he concluded: "Just enjoy it and have an open mind. Try different levels. I speak to people now who get disappointed if they don't get accepted into an academy or get released. But I can tell you first hand that it's not the end.
"I had to drop down to the Unibond league and then find my way up to my level. I'm big believer that it doesn't matter where you start, you'll find your level. You can't throw the towel in. You've just got to keep plugging on and you'll always find your level."
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