In My Sporting Hero, a new podcast series from Nutmeg, footballers talk about the athletes who inspire them. Sometimes those sportsmen and women are also footballers. Sometimes not. You can listen to the audio on this post, on the podcast app of your choice (just search for ‘My Sporting Hero’) or enjoy the written version below.
This time on My Sporting Hero, our guest is Marc McNulty.
Edinburgh-born Marc started his senior career at Livingston. He was a prolific goalscorer there, netting 48 times in 123 matches, and contributed immensely to the Lions’ return to Scotland’s second tier after the club had been demoted to the bottom division due to financial meltdown. Marc’s exploits stirred interest from south of the border, and he was signed by Sheffield United, reaching the semi-final of the League Cup before being snapped up by Coventry City. He aided the Sky Blues’ promotion to League One, and his subsequent time at Reading was dominated by loan spells at Sunderland, Hibernian and Dundee United. He now plays across the Irish Sea for Shamrock Rovers.
The striker’s sporting hero is Henrik Larsson, the Swedish goalscoring king of Parkhead when Marc was a little Celtic supporter and onetime match mascot.
My older brother and my dad were big Celtic fans, so from a very young age, the love for Celtic was ingrained in me. We would travel through to Glasgow on the Celtic supporters bus to attend matches. It was brilliant going along back then. I absolutely loved Celtic and I was one of those fans who had the Celtic strips, Celtic wallpaper, Celtic bedsheets, a Celtic lamp. I also had pictures of Henrik Larsson, and then one day I met him when I was a mascot.
Henrik was the main man, and everyone loved him. He was easy to love, especially for a young person who loved football. And he scored loads of goals, and I used to like scoring goals when I was young. That was what sort of sparked my love for football. My earliest memories of him are when he had the dreadlocks. Looking back, you realise how good a team he played in, and some of the players were unbelievable. Rangers also had great players at that time, the squads were unbelievable.
I was lucky enough to actually walk out with Henrik. My dad was friends with John Robertson, when he was manager of Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and we played them away in a Scottish Cup tie and I was the Celtic mascot. I can’t actually remember too much about being in the changing room before the match, but I do remember walking out with the team wearing the full strip; my mum has a video of it somewhere. There’s a photograph from that day of me with Henrik, but unfortunately we lost the game, so my parents teased me for being a jinx! However, just to be around people like Henrik was such an amazing feeling, and because of that, as a player I’ve always tried to give a bit of time to the fans, especially the kids.
I loved the way Henrik used to celebrate a goal, and when I played as a kid I would mimic his celebration whenever I scored. He had so many good players around him as well, which obviously helped him, but he was always the standout for me and I really looked up to him. However, when you’re young, you don’t fully appreciate what he brought to the team. You don’t realise how hard he was working, and what else he brought to the game. It’s not until you are older and you look back at videos and clips that you see what an amazing all-round player he was, and not just a goalscorer.
I remember in particular the goal he scored against Rangers when we beat them 6-2 at Parkhead. He sort of nutmegged the defender and then chipped the goalkeeper. I always wanted to score a goal like that in my career, and even now, if I get that kind of chance, the thought will always be in my head to score something like that.
He broke his leg, which was really bad, but the resilience to come back from that injury and be the player that he was for Celtic was exceptional, really. It’s easy to go under at a club the size of Celtic, especially if you don’t start off too well and the fans aren’t on your side right away. I’ve been through that at clubs in my career, because as a striker you are automatically expected to score goals. So, for Henrik to overcome a poor start and a leg break just shows what kind of character he was.
Henrik then went on to achieve so much after he left Glasgow. It was amazing to see your hero do so well at other clubs. A lot of players start going downhill as they get older, and perhaps go to clubs that aren’t as big. But he went to Barcelona and Manchester United, two of the biggest teams in the world. That just shows how good a player he actually was.
I’d love to have played with him. He had a very high level of football intelligence. He was a striker who did everything. He was brilliant at coming short, linking the play, and his movement was absolutely brilliant as well. He could score headers, score with both feet, score tap-ins, shoot from outside the box, and even take the odd free-kick. He just wanted to be involved everywhere. As a striker, I’ve not scored many headed goals in my career, and I didn’t really expect to score many, but Henrik had the mentality that he could score any type of goal. It seemed like he just scored goals all the time and that’s what I loved about him. He was utterly ruthless, just hungry for goals and a proper striker just wants to score goals. That came with hard work and he worked his absolute socks off, I always remember that.
He was like always closing down defenders. The fullback would try to clear it and Henrik would try and block it, and the fans really appreciated that. I wish I had known when I was younger, that if you are playing badly, you should just run about and put your foot in because fans will forgive you having a bad game, but they’ll not forgive you for not trying. And there have probably been times in my career when I was younger when all I was focused on was scoring and nothing else.
It would be great to get a picture with him again, and I’d probably look back on the last picture I got with him when I was a boy. I think if I met him I’d be starstruck, I don’t really think I’d know what to say to him. He was never in the newspapers for being a troublemaker, and he never disrespected other players or anything like that. He has always just been liked by everyone and everyone recognised him as a truly great player and respected him for that. You can just tell what type of a guy he is.
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