Gary Mulligan didn’t get many minutes during his time with Wolves and Sheffield United, but he did pick up vital experience which helped him build a career in the game. And he’s still going!
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When you have played for Wolves, even if it is just for a really short time, it is difficult to completely escape.
Even when visiting a chippy, many miles from Molineux!
Later this year, it will be two decades since striker Gary Mulligan enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame in the Wolves first team, coming off the bench in a Championship game at Burnley.
It is not something he shouts about, or an accolade which appeals to any sort of ego. Far from it.
Indeed, in Mulligan’s eyes, his reflections of life at Wolves are more an appreciation about providing a starting point of a career which would blossom later, particularly at Gillingham.
It is, however, clearly something to be proud of, especially when making the odd weekend trip for a takeaway!
“I have fond memories of Wolves, always will have, and it’s the first place in England that I lived,” recalls the Dubliner.
“I’m always looking out for their results, and it’s great to see how well they are doing and the win at Spurs at the weekend.
“I live in Northampton now, and the lad that owns the chip shop nearby is a big Wolves fan.
“I always have a decent craic with him if I pop in on a weekend, we’ll chat about results and so on.
“For me Wolves will always be really important, as without them my career would never have happened.”
Visits to the aforementioned chip ship must be carefully timed to tie in with a training and playing schedule because it’s a career, for Mulligan, which is still going.
At 38, he plays for all-conquering Harborough Town, who, having won the United Counties League Premier Division South title a couple of years ago, now sit top of the Northern Premier League Midlands division with an opportunity to climb to Step 3 of the non-league pyramid.
His minutes may be more limited these days, often from the substitute’s bench and no longer up front but either at the back or sitting in midfield in front of the defence.
“My striker days are over and I certainly can’t run the channels like I used to,” Mulligan laughs.
But the fact he is still training twice a week and turning out at the weekend – coupled with a full-time job as a teacher at Kettering Buccleuch Academy – is certainly a sign of an enduring love of football that is showing no signs of fading with time.
“Obviously I’m only playing part-time now and not as much as I used to, but the lads keep asking me, ‘when are you going to retire’?” he quips.
“I’ll be honest, that’s a question which hasn’t even entered my head.
“Football is all I’ve known since coming over from Ireland when I was 16, I don’t know anything different and I still really enjoy it.
“Touch wood I’ve never really had any bad injuries, and I’ve kept myself reasonably fit and must have a good metabolism as I never really put on weight.
“Working in a school now also means I can get into the gym before and after school to keep me ticking over.”
It was after leaving school as a student that Mulligan first set out on his career path, heading across the Irish Sea to join Wolves as a 16-year-old.
He enjoyed his youth football with Belvedere in the much-vaunted Dublin District Schoolboy’s League which produced many top players and thus, attracted a steady stream of scouts from professional clubs in England.
In school holidays he would come over for trials with several different clubs, not just Wolves but also the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United and Coventry.
Eventually, the choice for a scholarship came down to City and Wolves, who had renowned Irish scout Willie Byrne in their corner, and Mulligan opted for a move to Molineux.
It must have felt like a big step to leave home in Ireland at such a young age, but it was a time when a steady stream of aspiring hopefuls were making that similar journey.
Mulligan headed over with compatriot Patrick Flynn, to a club which already had an Irish contingent with others such as Graham Ward and Keith Andrews, who was something of a senior figure to the Academy players.
“It might have been a big step but I was looking forward to it because I wanted to be a footballer – all of us did,” Mulligan recalls.
“Every day I was going out and doing something I really wanted to do, with a decent group of lads.
“Having a few other Irish players certainly helped and Keith took us all under his wing a little bit but, to be fair, all the senior players at Wolves were good like that.
“They made us welcome, and we just wanted to impress them as much as we could.
“When I first came over Keith Downing was my first coach who was so professional and loved coaching and training, and then I moved on to John Perkins, another great coach who is sadly no longer with us.
“At the time Terry Connor was working with the first team but he was also someone who took a real interest in the young players as well.
“He would often stay out and do extra training with the young lads and put on extra sessions – it was all really enjoyable.”
The start of the 2004/05 season was something of a strange time at Molineux.
The euphoria of play-off glory little over a year earlier had soon been overtaken by the grim reality of immediate Premier League relegation, in part due to a lack of decent investment in the squad.
Re-adapting to life in the muck and nettles of the Championship was a challenge, and one which Wolves were struggling with.
For the young Mulligan, that meant opportunity, initially on the bench for a home game with Leeds in front of a crowd of 28, 397.
Then came a trip to Turf Moor, when Shaun Newton put Wolves in front before Robbie Blake’s equaliser.
With eight minutes of normal time remaining, Mulligan, at 19, was sent on for his senior debut, replacing Kenny Miller in the process.
Miller wasn’t the only big player and big personality in the squad at the time with Mulligan joining a Wolves team also featuring Paul Ince, Jody Craddock, Joleon Lescott and Colin Cameron.
Concentration was key!
“I was excited and nervous at the same time,” Mulligan admits.
“Just warming up ahead of that Leeds game had been incredible in front of such a big crowd.
“And then to get on at Burnley, I remember thinking with the game at 1-1 that I didn’t want to do anything daft like give the ball away so that they might score, even though I was a striker!
“I just wanted to make sure my first touch was good and that I did as well as I could.
“I think Incey passed me the ball first and I was like, ‘****’, I don’t want to mess up a pass from Incey!
“I didn’t get a lot of touches but I won a few headers, nothing special, but at least we didn’t concede while I was on the pitch!”
Mulligan was then an unused substitute in a League Cup win at Rochdale but, very soon, things were going to change at Molineux.
Boss Dave Jones was under pressure and would soon lose his job, by which time Mulligan had been sent on a three-month loan to further his experience in League Two with Rushden & Diamonds, impressing and notching his first goals in senior football.
Glenn Hoddle had succeeded Jones, also with the pressure and expectation of needing to deliver success, and, for young players like Mulligan, that meant a sustained first team breakthrough was always going to prove difficult.
“I wasn’t good enough to be a regular around the first team at that time, and with my contract at Wolves coming to an end, I knew I needed to be playing more football,” Mulligan reflects.
There was plenty of lower league interest in acquiring his services, but, in what he recalls as a desire to try and remain as high up the system for as long as he could, he secured a switch, still in the Championship, to Wolves opponents this Sunday, Sheffield United.
Blades boss Neil Warnock had gone along to scout Vio Ganea in a reserve game at Telford, but it was Mulligan who caught his eye.
“I have watched Mulligan a few times and can say he was the best player on the pitch in those games,” Warnock declared at the time.
Unfortunately, Mulligan also found the challenge of breaking into another Championship frontline too tough to crack, making a couple of League Cup appearances for United before heading off on loan spells in League One with Port Vale and Gillingham.
It was with the Gills where his career really took off, a permanent move followed and he scored plenty of goals including against the likes of Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth.
But if life in the top two tiers didn’t quite work out as he might have hoped as a young striker, having the managerial trio of Jones, Hoddle and Warnock on the CV is clearly not too shabby!
“It was only more recently that I have thought a bit more about having worked under those managers,” he acknowledges.
“At the time you are just trying your best and just getting on with it but when I look back maybe I did o-k to get to that stage and it certainly gave me great experience.
“I mean – Neil Warnock is the one of the most successful Championship managers of all time.
“It was only when I dropped down with Gillingham that I managed to get a decent run of games and become a regular so maybe I should have done that earlier rather than go to Sheffield United.
“At the time, I had wanted to stay as high up as I could for as long as possible, but then even going to Gillingham I was learning off some great strikers such as Darren Byfield and Neil Harris.”
Mulligan would later be signed by former Wolves assistant Stuart Gray at Northampton, before moving into non-league, eventually going part-time at the age of 28.
Since then, he has tasted plenty of success over the last decade, including promotions with Brackley Town, a league win with Kettering, reaching the play-off final when captain of Corby, and now being part of an upwardly mobile club at Harborough.
It was with Brackley that he first started working in schools as part of a coaching business run by then manager Jon Brady, who has since gone on to make his own mark in the professional game, currently as boss at Northampton.
That new line of work was to open another door for Mulligan which now provides him with a very different career to dove-tail alongside life as a part-time footballer.
“I would go in and do after school clubs and lunch clubs for schools for Jon’s company, and I ended up staying at the first school I was at where I am now doing PE lessons and helping out covering other lessons when teachers are off,” he explains.
“I’m enjoying it, and I think a lot of the skills I learned and experiences in football have helped play a part.
“Football gave me that confidence to speak to people, whether one-on-one or in groups, and so I don’t mind speaking to a group of 30 or 40 kids and leading them in PE lessons.
“I don’t tend to tell them about the football although a few had seen me play for Kettering and others have found me on Google!
“To be honest, that’s nice for those who are interested in football as it helps to have a chat with them and build a good working relationship.
“So yes, I’d say football teaches you a lot of good things which I have been able to take into the work at the school, but don’t get me wrong, one or two bad habits as well!”
Those bad habits to which Mulligan refers are the tendency at times to not look after himself as much as he could, and perhaps drink more than he should, as well as being drawn into the world of gambling.
Not necessarily awful memories which keep him awake at night, but moments when he wonders if things might have gone a bit better for him had his focus on football been slightly more razor sharp.
That having been said, given the statistics about how few players now progress through academies to the world of professional football, his is certainly a success story both for himself and the variety of academy staff at Wolves who helped bring him through.
“When I look back on my career, I do feel pleased especially given those statistics they now say about players coming through academies,” Mulligan admits.
“I went part-time at 28 so had a decent ten years in the game, and am still going in non-league.
“I am proud of what I have achieved, although there are times when maybe I could have tried that little bit harder, or when my mind was distracted.
“Times when I went out drinking a bit more than I should, or got too much into gambling which took away my focus.
“I think you learn from your experiences and maybe I could have done things differently but hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
“I am just delighted to still be involved in football, at such a great club as Harborough, which has such a good set-up in terms of facilities and having teams from Under-7 level upwards.
“They have a really good chairman in Peter Dougan, one of the best from all the clubs I have been to, and a great man manager in Mitch Austin with a record that speaks for itself – he has won 100 of the 130-odd games he has been in charge of here.
“It’s a good club making progress and hopefully, come the end of April, we might have made a bit more progress again!
“That is definitely more than enough to keep me motivated and keep me enjoying it, but of course I will always be grateful to Wolves because that was where it all began.
“I only played a few minutes and would never say I was really a Wolves player, and yet I have those really fond memories because it was where I made the progress which took me into having a senior career.”
It was only for a short time but it’s in the record books that Mulligan is the 861st player to pull on the Wolves shirt and that will never be taken away.
And there’s a guy works down the chip shop who will always keep the Wolves fires burning!