Marsh revels in amazing journey to Accrington

During the 1990s, when Mike Marsh played alongside Ian Rush for Liverpool, a television advert extolled the virtues of milk. A small boy who aspired to emulate the great Welsh striker was seen warning another urchin to drink his daily pinta, or he would "end up playing for Accrington Stanley".

Marsh grins at its mention, aware that his current status might suggest he did not quaff enough of the white stuff. For after a career as chequered as a Croatia shirt, which has taken him from Anfield to Istanbul via West Ham and Coventry, with further stops in football's nether regions, he has actually "ended up", aged 33, playing for Accrington.

Superficially, it reads like a riches-to-rags story; a stark contrast with the fortunes, and fortune, of another former Liverpool colleague. Steve McMan-aman is paid £65,000 a week to play with Zinedine Zidane, Raul and Ronaldo for the European Cup holders, Real Madrid. Marsh, who never made more than £1,200 a week when they were midfield allies, earns a part-timer's peanuts with the UniBond League leaders.

Malign fate, in the form of the knee injury which ended his League career, does surface in Marsh's story. But to those who assume he must be down on his luck to be turning out for a club famous for folding in mid-season in the Fourth Division, he offers this positive rebuttal: "I've had an absolute ball. To earn a living playing football for 10 years was beyond my wildest dreams. And I'm still loving it."

Marsh begrudges "Macca" nothing, occasionally chatting to him by phone, although their sporting roots are as different as Accrington's Crown Ground and the Bernabeu Stadium. McManaman, despite being a boyhood Everton fan, was nurtured in Liverpool's youth academy. Marsh came to the attention of the club he followed home and away when playing for Kirkby Town under-18s and for a "boozer" called The Railway.

The pub team were sponsored by a DIY firm run by Phil Thompson (now Gérard Houllier's assistant), whose endorsement won Marsh a trial at Anfield in 1988. Kenny Dalglish signed him and he went, in months, from park football to playing for the champions, the first of 100 games with Liverpool.

"I'd have settled for one," the "Born-and-bred Red" admits. "But with hindsight I feel I was a much better player than I showed at Anfield. I'd come from my home-town club, who are now defunct, and suddenly I was playing for Liverpool. I was there six years and spent the first five feeling overawed by people I was working with. I'd have had a better career if I'd joined another club."

Overshadowing his sojourn was the Hillsborough disaster. "The club normally took squad players to semi-finals but they let me go with my mates from Kirkby. We were in the Leppings Lane End, in the seats above where it happened. People I'd gone to school with died. When Liverpool first played at Sheffield Wednesday after the disaster, I was a substitute. An awful, eerie experience."

The end of Liverpool's post-Heysel exile from Europe remains his happiest memory. Last week, Houllier's side visited Spartak Moscow, 10 years after Marsh made the same trek. "I told my kids, who are nine and 14: 'I played against them'. Then Auxerre were on, against Arsenal, and I went: 'I scored against them'. They looked at me as if I had two heads."

Yet he eventually grew restless to be a first-team regular. "I was no longer in awe of people. Liverpool were buying players I felt I shouldn't be playing second fiddle to. I said if I couldn't command a place, I'd like to go."

So he went: to West Ham, which was "brilliant – leaving them is my one regret"; then to Coventry under another of his Kop idols, Phil Neal. But Ron Atkinson soon took over and Marsh endured "a difficult time" until Graeme Souness invited him and his Evertonian wife to Turkey to talk to Galatasaray. "I'd have gone anywhere," chuckles Marsh, "and I'd take Istanbul over Coventry any day."

After being carried shoulder-high from Atatürk airport by dozens of fans, he was wined and dined beside the Bosphorus by the club president. "I remember Graeme whispering in my ear: 'You'll have to sign for us now'."

His four months with the Istanbul club included some eye-opening experiences. Dean Saunders, who had also joined them, went native, smearing goat's blood on his boots and face before games. ("Not my cup of tea," Marsh says). One game was near the Iraqi border, at Van, a town under curfew. Even ordering a beer in the hotel "caused a rumpus".

He later served three more ex-Liverpool colleagues -- Ronnie Whelan at Southend, Jan Molby with Kidderminster and Mark Wright at Southport – but an insurance pay-off after an injury with the Essex club meant he could not stay with Molby's side after leading them out of the Conference. When a brief full-time spell with Boston United ended a year ago, Marsh spent nine months kicking his heels.

Enter ambitious Accrington and their chairman-manager duo of Eric Whalley and John Coleman. Marsh, as wiry and competitive as in his prime, has helped the reborn club to the UniBond summit, Stanley visiting Barrow today after finally losing their unbeaten record at Frickley last Saturday.

"Finding something else to do is the hardest part." he says. "What do you do when you stop playing? People leaving school at 16 are supposed to know what they want to do in life. I'm double that and don't know. In the meantime, I can still play football, regardless of what it's doing to my body.

"I'm in a pretty bad way at times, which worries my wife. But I also love playing, being part of the whole thing: training two nights a week, having a purpose. When I wasn't playing I didn't pine for it or even miss it. But since starting again with Accrington, I've really enjoyed it. And while I can earn money through football, it's a way of paying the bills."