Brian Viner: High flyer proves there is life after Old Trafford exit

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Manchester United class of 1993. Just emerging from the youth ranks in that annus mirabilis were David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers, yet it was a lad called Richard Irving who particularly captivated the 36-year-old Bryan Robson.

Towards the end of his United career, Robson made a point of working with the youngsters. Reporting at the time, the sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney observed that Robson was "as close to lyrical as he can be when he discusses the first-year apprentice Richard Irving from Halifax, a boy he regards as the perfect partner for Scholes at the front."

Even Martians not much interested in football know what became of Beckham and Scholes, but, I mused, whatever happened to Irving? The point I was trying to bludgeon home concerned the difference between promise and achievement. How must Irving have been feeling, as he watched his old friends, not all of whom were held to have as big a future as he did, contest the the Worthington Cup final?

A few days ago I got my answer. An e-mail arrived. "Dear Brian," it said. "I was lying on the beach at the Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados with my wife and two young children two weeks ago when another hotel guest passed me your article... in which my name featured. I wanted to let you know that I am not at all bitter about any 'disappeared dreams' and am, in fact, a commercial airline pilot now.

"I live in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, and often bump into David Beckham in the village and can honestly say I would not want my life to be different. The bodyguards that follow him and his family to the fish-and-chip shop are not what anyone would want for his family. Yours sincerely, Richard Irving."

I felt both humbled and uplifted by this. How presumptuous of me to cast him as the embittered hasn't-quite-been; how marvellous of him to make such a success of his life, in a profession a world apart from football, that he can afford family holidays at the swanky Sandy Lane. I e-mailed him back, and on Friday we had a long telephone conversation.

He told me that he joined United at 15, by which time he had already played for England Schoolboys. Alex Ferguson assured him that, if he continued progressing at the same rate, he would make the first team by the age of 21.

"But I somehow never made the transition from being a boy footballer to being a man footballer," he said. "Maybe because I didn't work as hard as I should have done. I'd had everything so young, and it came so easy, I just thought it would go on like that."

How much sublime talent has been lost, I wonder, because of the complacency of youth? Irving was later promoted to United's reserves, but in a practice game he had a shock. He made a fool out of Kevin Moran early on, but Moran, the commerce graduate from University College, Dublin, did not like being sold dummies. He closed in on the whipper-snapper "and I woke up about five minutes later".

The coaching staff at United tried to teach Irving how to be a "man footballer". They told him not to wait to be clattered, but to do the clattering first. "Let the other guy know you're no soft touch," they counselled, "and study Mark Hughes, who, like you, is not the biggest guy in the world."

Irving duly became top scorer for the reserves, but felt under-valued when United offered him just a one-year deal. He asked for an audience with Ferguson. "I went in with my agent, because I was petrified of him. He said: 'Son, I'm worried about your size. I was 5ft 8in on tiptoes and I'm worried about your hunger for it.' He was right on both counts. He's a fantastic judge of players."

Irving joined Nottingham Forest, then went to Aberdeen, then to Macclesfield. "But, with respect, it was like having worked for Rolls Royce, then going to work for Skoda. And in the lower divisions you're playing against people who are thick as mince, who have chips on both shoulders, who think they're better than they are. I hated it." He turned semi-professional with Runcorn, which he loved, and sought an alternative career, initially as a chiropodist.

"But I didn't like that. Then I went on honeymoon to Mauritius, and, coming back, I went on the flight deck. I thought it must be impossible to become a pilot, but they said that all you need is six GCSEs and two A-Levels, which I had. So I did two years' training and graduated last October."

In the meantime, he has also built up a successful business renovating and selling houses, using money carefully invested during his football career. So, altogether, he is as regretful as Edith Piaf. "I still see David Beckham. I was talking to him recently in a restaurant and he must have signed 50 autographs while I was there. I think he's amazing. He never blanks anyone.

"But when he leaves, there's a Range Rover with blacked-out windows in front of his car, and another one behind. I wouldn't want that. Anyway, I also think that maybe he and the other lads made me look better than I was."

We nattered on for a while, and after I put the phone down I reflected that I have rarely talked to anyone as grounded as this 27-year-old man who, once figuratively and now literally, has spent so much of his life flying high.

b.viner@independent.co.uk