36. Gary Walsh

Signed from: Youth team
Debut: 3-3 draw vs Aston Villa, December 13th 1986
League Record: 49 games (+1 as sub)
Sold to: Middlesbrough (£600,000), summer of 1995

From Wigan, Gary Walsh was a promising Rubgy League player who fell into football almost by chance: when another player dropped out of a game, he took the place. A United scout was watching and he was soon signed up, playing in the same youth team as Lee Martin and Tony Gill.

A few weeks after Fergie took charge, he got his chance aged only 18. At this point, Gary Bailey  - another blonde goalie who’d graduated to the senior team while only a teenager - was on the verge of retiring from injury (he’d play his five final games in the Spring of 1987) and Walsh was thrown in. Ferguson clearly rated him, as he played plenty of games throughout the rest of 86/87 and started the following season as first choice ahead of the more experienced Chris Turner, who had been signed by Ron Atkinson from Sunderland in the summer of 1985, ostensibly as back-up to Bailey, who at that point was fully fit and firmly established as our #1 and third choice England ‘keeper.

Like Bailey again, injury would ruin Gary Walsh’s United career. The most serious was after being kicked in the head during a mid-season tour in Bermuda, from which it was feared he wouldn’t play again.

As suggested by his lateness in entering this blog, Walsh was out of first team contention for three years – his only first team action coming during a loan spell up at Aidrie – with Jim Leighton then Les Sealey holding onto the goalie’s shirt. He made his comeback in February 1991 and appeared in a few more games that season after Mad Les’ bad injury in the ’91 League Cup final, and even won a Cup Winners’ Cup medal as an unused sub.

Of course, any hopes he had of establishing a first team place when Sealey was let go faded to nothing when we went out and snapped the world’s best in as a new #1. I barely remember him getting a game until the end of 1993/94, when he came on as sub at Ipswich and stayed in the team for the last two games of the season: against Southampton he was particularly impressive and a FA Cup winners medal for sitting on the bench was some small reward.

He may have had more the next season, when he finally got a half-decent run in the team and played ten games, which would have been enough for a Championship medal, if we’d won it that season. Sadly for Gary, we finished second due to last day heroics of West Ham keeper Ludek Miklosko denying us the win needed for the title.

That summer, Bryan Robson took him up to Middlesbrough where he was first choice keeper for a while, followed by a spell at Bradford City where he made over 100 league appearances before ending his playing career as back-up at Wigan. Last heard working as a goalkeeping coach at Hull City.