For Mark Todd, an impressive playing career spent largely in South Yorkshire will only ever form a part of his footballing story.
It also featured a short spell at Wolves, having started with an apprenticeship with Manchester United.
Todd is still, at 56, very much involved in the game, three years into an assignment he is particularly cherishing, a dual role in Academy scouting with Wolves’ next opponents and reigning Premier League champions, Manchester City.
But while the 40 years since he first crossed the Irish Sea from his native Belfast have pretty much all been involved with football, it has also included the different side of football.
The community side of football. The magical side of football. The part of football which engages and inspires young hopefuls, and gives people hope.
For just over two decades, Todd worked in the community departments of Rotherham and Sheffield United, the two clubs where he gave so much distinguished service as a player.
At the Blades he was Head of the Foundation, effectively running a business, building it up from a team of five which included former Wolverhampton-born striker Adrian Littlejohn to an operation turning over £1.5million a year and employing 60 staff.
As with Wolves Foundation, the Sheffield United Foundation delivers a hugely positive impact right at the very heart of the community, and that’s an attitude that mirrors Todd’s thoughts about the importance of the sport.
He too has gone through tough times, openly admitting to struggling with his mental health on two separate occasions in his life, when his career came to a premature end due to injury at 28, and more recently, after turning 50.
A knowledge of the importance and power of family has therefore seen Todd set up his own ‘Football Family Effect’ initiative, operating under the hashtag FFE, and using his contacts to help people – especially young people – through difficult challenges.
“As a footballer you do often live in a bubble but a lot of footballers do give back,” Todd explains.
“Every single football club supports their community programme and I know from my own experience just how important those programmes are.
“They have all really taken off in recent years and we built it up at Sheffield United, which was a challenge in terms of effectively running a business, but one from which I learned so much.
“As with all football clubs, it was about engaging with the disadvantaged, engaging with the disengaged, helping people get fitter and healthier, making everything more socially inclusive.
“You can give people great footballing experiences and access to players and facilities – our stadiums and training grounds are iconic and can make such a difference to fans when they are able to visit by giving them magical moments and magical memories.
“I think we sometimes need to champion the good side of football, the better side of what football creates, how players – who can be going through their own struggles – will help people, and the emotions that can follow.”
When it comes to his own playing career, Todd certainly ran the gamut of emotions which affect and afflict most players at one time or another.
When it comes to Wolves, it was perhaps a story of the one that got away.
Born and brought up in Belfast, Todd first kicked a ball at the age of three, and soon found Liverpool as his team after watching their win over Newcastle in the 1974 FA Cup Final.
Playing junior football, at the age of 11 he was Player of the Tournament at a competition in Scotland, and, choosing football over rugby at Belfast High Grammar School, along with a love of athletics and cricket, he soon became hot property.
He impressed whilst representing Northern Ireland in the Victory Shield at Under-15 level, and, just like George Best, Sammy McIlroy and Norman Whiteside before him, was scouted by the legendary Bob Bishop as the next Northern Irish cab off the rank to head across to England, and join Manchester United.
There were other clubs interested such as Tottenham, Rangers and Leicester, and Todd went on several trials, but the lure of United, even as a Liverpool fan, was overpowering.
“It was a real privilege and honour to join Manchester United,” he explains.
“There were three years of really good learning which set me up to become a pro.
“Unfortunately, even though I felt I was good enough to become a ‘Fergie fledgling’, Sir Alex (Ferguson) said no to me in the end.
“My last ever game at United was for the reserves, against Newcastle at Old Trafford.
“We beat them 2-0, and I scored one, and Frank Stapleton got the other.
“I do think I was good enough to get in that team when he was introducing young players but was I good enough to stay there? Probably not.
“But those three years I had at United certainly didn’t do me any harm in terms of the career I ended up having afterwards.”
And before moving on, it has to be noted that Todd, and all those other United hopefuls at the time, ended up with one particular memory and experience which will forever stand the test of time.
They got the chance to play alongside Bobby Charlton. An incredible experience, as Todd explains.
“I can still remember, it was 1985, the end of our first year as trainees.
“We had won the Lancashire League, and were off on a close season tour to play in a tournament in Germany.
‘We were actually knocked out by Fiorentina in the quarter finals, having already played against Eintracht Frankfurt, when I marked Andreas Moller, who scored the winning penalty against England in Euro 96.
“We had a game against Grasshopper Zurich’s youth team, and were sat in the dressing room getting changed when Bobby Charlton – later Sir Bobby – walked through the door.
“He was an ambassador for United, so we thought he was there to support us but then he sits down and starts taking his shoes off.
“Our coach Eric Harrison then tells us that Bobby is going to guest for us in the game.
“We were like, ‘oh my God this is amazing’, playing alongside a World Cup winner, the best midfield player there has ever been.
“He was 48 at that stage, he played the first half and a bit of the second, and ran about like a wee lad and smashed in two of his trademark thunderbolts!
“Not just that, he then took us to a lovely restaurant in Zurich and bought us all a steak dinner and half a lager – amazing.
“This was obviously long before the times of mobile phones, and all I wanted to do was tell my Mum that I had played in a team with Bobby Charlton and he had taken us out for dinner!”
More inspiration for Todd to take forward, which is exactly what he did with Sheffield United who, after being relegated to the Third Division, hit back under the management of Dave Bassett to record successive promotions to the topflight.
The second of those, in the 1988/89 campaign, included that memorable Molineux night when a 2-2 draw with Wolves saw both teams secure promotion.
It was the end of a busy season for Todd in the Blades engine room and he was rested on that occasion, but he had played the full game in the 2-0 win against Wolves at Bramall Lane earlier in the campaign.
Todd would later enjoy another promotion, his third in four seasons, whilst at Rotherham, and there was a time when such were the fluctuating fortunes of the teams he represented that he played six consecutive seasons in a different division.
The loan spell at Wolves came towards the backend of the 1990/91 season, the start of the long, old road to reach the Premier League which wouldn’t materialise for well over a decade.
Todd arrived with the desire and hope that the loan might become permanent, but family circumstances ultimately removed that potential opportunity.
That’s not to say he didn’t enjoy his brief spell dancing with Wolves, travelling in with former Sheffield United team-mate Paul Stancliffe, whose talking-up of goalscoring legend Steve Bull quickly rang true.
“I travelled down most days with Stan and, just after signing, I remember saying to him, ‘so how good is Bully’?
“’Wait till you see him in training’, was his reply.
“He was good enough in training, and the next day we were at home to Oxford, and I made my debut.
“Bully scored a hat trick in the first half, and when we came in at the break Stan said to me: ‘I ****** told you didn’t I’!
“What a guy he is as well.
“They were building the big Toyota Centre near Derby at the time and we were late once or twice because of it.
“Bully would always be there, pretending to look at his watch, giving it the ‘what time do you call this’?!
“He and Mutchy were such a great partnership, and I did enjoy my time at Wolves.
“Even though there were only a couple of sides of the ground open, which may seem fairly bleak, there was still a great atmosphere especially with so many packed into that South Bank terrace behind the goal.”
That atmosphere particularly crackled for a drama-filled Black Country Derby, the only local derby Todd was able to sample during his career.
An eventful 2-2 draw with West Bromwich Albion included keeper Mike Stowell going off injured, defender Tom Bennett replacing him in goal, and a Wolves fan invading the pitch to present Baggies defender Graham Roberts with a carrot.
Todd came off the bench, had his header from a corner saved before Mutch notched Wolves’ equaliser, and was then so close to becoming a hero himself with a potentially match-winning assist.
“I was on the right wing, checked inside and put in a left wing cross which Bully headed in,” he recalls.
“We were all celebrating and didn’t realise until we were back at the halfway line that the offside flag had gone up!
“I remember thinking I could sign for Wolves but there were a few things going on with family circumstances and so, in the end, the talks were never too deep.”
Todd did actually manage to score against Albion whilst Rotherham, the best goal of his career as part of a brace in a 2-2 draw at The Hawthorns after which Baggies boss Ossie Ardiles was keen to sign him.
But it was there that everything started to go wrong.
He was becoming more and more troubled by tendonitis in his knee, needing injections, and eventually, the joint completely gave way in a game against Plymouth.
Major surgery ruled Todd out for over a year, and when he came back, he remembers feeling ‘like of a duck out of water’.
“It was frightening, I’d played football all my life but I had never felt as scared as when I came back,” he admits.
“I had embraced all the challenges I had faced in my career, the pressure of playing against Manchester United in a FA Cup Quarter Final at Bramall Lane, but I really struggled when I got back and was never the same again.”
That was the start of a really challenging time for Todd, forced to retire from full-time football, all he had ever known, at the age of 28.
Not only that, but at the same time he was going through a marital break-up, and his mum was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
“I have always tried to be as happy as I can be, lively and bubbly in the dressing room and having the craic with my Belfast personality,” he explains.
“But it was really difficult at that time with those three different massive things affecting me both with football and in my personal life.
“I have always defined my career as being in three stages – the first three years of learning with Manchester United, six years where I crammed most of my games in and then another three when I really struggled with my knee before having to stop.
“I felt miserable, because I was still in my 20s and was going through the sort of stuff players do when they are 36 or 37 with having to hang up my boots.
“The way to look at it though, is that everything happens for a reason, and if I hadn’t stopped playing full-time, I wouldn’t have met my current partner Caroline, and we wouldn’t have had two fantastic children that we have now.
“I joke with my kids now about whether I could have had another ten years as a footballer – or had them instead!
“It’s an easy decision though, family is everything to me and I feel really fortunate to have had that opportunity.”
Several different developments helped Todd emerge from his post-retirement difficulties.
Having returned to part-time football in non-league, he found a happy home with Blyth Spartans which included a journey to the first round of the FA Cup.
He started doing his coaching badges with Rotherham, whilst also picking up a role within their Football In the Community department, the start of a pathway which would lead to those two decades playing such a pivotal role in the local area.
“Eventually I realised that my full-time career had gone, but that I had to embrace what was coming next, and I had to enjoy it,” he insists.
“I’m a passionate guy and an emotional guy and I realised that I had three great opportunities, in carrying on playing at a decent level, doing my coaching badges and working in the community.
“I had to bounce back from being so miserable about my knee, and became really happy with my lot considering I had been struggling before.”
Todd was also always indebted to the support of his parents, although he would sadly lose his mother several years later.
And the next biggest challenge around his mental health arrived when he was 50.
This time, after another difficult 18 months, the way out was for him to set up his own way of supporting the community via football, building on the skills and experiences nurtured during his time within CCO’s (Club Community Organisations).
This is when he set up FFE, the Football Family Effect, which originally provided support for two young fans Freddie and Harrison with Todd using his contacts such as Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder and past legends Tony Currie and Brian Deane to visit with gifts of club-related items or tickets.
More football fans have been helped since, including, most recently, Owen Jenkinson, a 15-year-old Rotherham fan currently battling a rare form of bone cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma for a second time.
“We arranged for Owen and his Dad to go to a Man City game recently, and then he was a guest at Rotherham, where he got on stage to talk about his treatment,” says Todd.
“A 15-year-old lad, talking so naturally in front of so many people, he’s a remarkable kid and it made me quite emotional.
“I was watching him and his brother and sister and his parents wondering how they are able to cope with this sort of battle every single day – as a parent myself I don’t know how they do it.
“It shows why it’s important that we do all this, which started when I had been suffering with poor mental health for a while and worked with my good mate Paddy, a former colleague at United’s Foundation, on doing a blog.
“It was just me getting a few of my thoughts and experiences down, but surprisingly it gained a lot of traction, and from it came this idea of the football family, that we can do something to help each other when we are struggling.
“What we do with FFE is just a few wee things to try and give people and families a bit of respite, to keep their spirits up, and create magic moments to try and help them smile.”
For Todd, FFE is now an important and endearing sideline to the day job, a very busy day job, working as an Academy and European scout for Manchester City with particular focus on Yorkshire in this country, and Poland and the Netherlands further afield.
That means constantly watching football, whether out on the grass of via video analysis, and also operating at the elite level, knowing that for players to break through at City to either represent the first team, such as Phil Foden, or be sold for sizeable transfer fees, such as Cole Palmer, they have to be something pretty special.
It’s role he is relishing, as well as being pleasantly surprised that despite the competition and sensitivities around recruitment, there is – within reason – a togetherness and camaraderie between scouts from different clubs, including between City and Wolves.
“It’s a great industry to be involved in and whilst it’s competitive, it’s also very supportive with a lot of banter behind the scenes which keeps you wanting to go out in the cold,” says Todd.
“I’m absolutely loving being back involved in football at such a brilliant club – people talk about the cream on the cake but this is like the sprinkles on the cream!”
Whilst Wolves will be looking to derail the City bandwagon on Saturday night, it may well be that Todd and his colleagues – including fellow former Molineux midfielder Phil Robinson – will have a Premier League title to celebrate in the coming weeks.
But he, more than anyone, knows that the power and influence of football is not always confined to what happens on the pitch.
Main picture courtesy Dave Bagnall