Turnbull’s journey from park to Premier League

But Chief Football Writer Paul Fraser has learned the young goalkeeper could have been playing as a striker.

IT was just like any other Sunday. The young, teenage centreforward packed his football kit into his bag, jumped into the family car with his mother and father, before going to play with his friends for Newton Aycliffe Youth, his local team.

Occasionally Ross Turnbull would play in the middle of midfield. Predominantly, though, he would lead the line and hit the net after quickly finding it was something he was good at.

But while his father, Steve, had been hugely impressed by his son’s ability as a striker, there was a sudden shock to the system for father and son.

Newton Aycliffe had no goalkeeper, he hadn’t turned up.

‘I’m going to stick Ross in goal Steve, what do you think?’ was the question posed by Aycliffe manager Arthur Vickerstaff before the match.

“Don’t be so bloody stupid,’’ blasted dad. “Ross will never make a goalkeeper.’’ The two men engaged in a heated argument which centred around the fact that Ross was the best man for the job. “I kept insisting he played outfield,” said Steve. “We ended up having quite a big row but Arthur was adamant.

“He kept saying ‘I’ve seen Ross playing in the kickabouts and he’s a good keeper and that’s just when they’re messing around’. I told him he was absolutely crackers, anyway, I lost. Ross went in goal.”

That was that. Turnbull went on to claim the cleanest hands in the league award for the Teesside Junior Football Alliance’s best goalkeeper, while Steve would continue to claim that Arthur got it wrong. Today, as Ross prepares to thwart the attacking riches on offer at Premier League leaders Chelsea, the family are quick to praise the decision made that day.

Arthur, well known around Aycliffe, was still involved in grassroots football until last season, when the motor neurone disease he was diagnosed with years ago took hold.

“If it wasn’t for Arthur, you’d never have been a goalkeeper,”

said Maureen Turnbull, 55, looking in the direction of her son, sitting beneath one of the caps he earned for England’s youth teams at the family home.

While not completely aware of what exactly went on, Ross responded: “I’m grateful. It happened so quickly and I have just had to get on with it.

When you’re young you don’t take it all in.

“I always used to enjoy playing outfield when I was younger, miles more. I can’t remember everything that went on like my dad can, I have just heard the stories. I always wanted to play up front when I was younger, but it just got to the stage where I realised I was a decent keeper.”

Having dedicated so much of his childhood to playing football, it is no surprise to learn that whenever he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up at Byerley Park Primary School or Woodham Community Technology College, it was a footballer.

‘Like thousands of others’ his mother remembers his teachers telling her on parents’ evenings.

But, after his successful season in goal for Newton Aycliffe, his dream was destined to come true and, like his emergence on to the Premier League stage, it all happened very quickly.

AFTER being installed as Arthur’s goalkeeper at the age of 12, by the time he had turned 14 he had been for lengthy trials with Sunderland and Darlington before signing Academy forms with Middlesbrough.

“I remember Ron Bone (Boro’s chief scout) coming to watch me play for Bishop Auckland District against Easington,” said Turnbull.

“There were two goalkeepers and we would take turns each week, and this particular game I was on the bench.

“With ten minutes to go, we were losing 1-0 and I was asked to go on up front and scored two. I would never have made it as a striker, though!”

That, however, didn’t stop Bone from telling Ross’ father that he could sign ‘as a striker or a goalkeeper’.

Despite the high regard he was instantly held in at Middlesbrough, there were knock backs along the way, most notably at Sunderland, where the six weeks he spent on trial left his mum thinking ‘I’d have sold our house and put the profits on him getting a deal with Sunderland after that’.

Her husband agreed. “There was a day when he was pulled out to go and do shooting practice with the older boys,”

said Steve, 53, a retired manufacturing director.

“He was only 13. They couldn’t score past him. We just thought it was an automatic that he would be kept on, or at least get another six to eight weeks. Then we got a letter two weeks later saying ‘Sorry, but no thanks’.”

Sunderland’s loss was to be Boro’s gain. Just months after he signed his contract he attended England trials. A squad player at first, he was to become the goalkeeper for two years in the Home Nations’ Victory Shield, when a certain Wayne Rooney showed signs of development.

“I went for a year, never played and then went the year after and played in the squad that also had Wayne (Rooney) in it,” recalled Ross. “I remember my first Victory Shield game and we were losing 1-0. I was playing really well. Wayne came on after 65 minutes, got man of the match! I was left thinking, ‘Hang on, I played really well!’ “But what sticks in my mind was there was a coach for that team who claimed Rooney would never make an England No 9. He wanted to play up front and the coach kept saying, ‘You’re not a No 9, you’re a No 7. You’ll never make a No 9.”

While Wayne’s rise was rapid and well publicised, Ross has had to wait longer for his time in the limelight.

And while the likes of David Raven, Lee Croft and Lewis Guy are making a name for themselves in the lower leagues, only Turnbull and Rooney are playing Premier League football this season.

He is now at the stage where Middlesbrough manager Gareth Southgate is ready to open contract talks after his impressive start to the season but “There’s nothing to report at the moment”.

Nevertheless, Ross realises he is far from the goalkeeper he wants to be, hoping experience and appearances will eventually lead to a return to England duty, this time at senior level.

“Long term that’s what everyone wants to do,” said Ross, who impressed Fabio Capello in Middlesbrough’s last outing, a 1-0 win over Wigan, and feels indebted to Boro goalkeeping coach Stephen Pears for his development over the last seven years.

“I have only played seven games and I have to keep improving. As long as I keep working hard I’m sure it will come but there are plenty of good young keepers around, like Scott Carson and Joe Hart. But you need the chance otherwise you can’t prove.

Fabio has proven he is not afraid to bring young players in.”

TO be even discussing future England prospects is a mark of the progress being made, although he realises that errors in the Premier League are more noticeable than when he was playing in the lower leagues.

The 23-year-old accepted responsibility for a weak punch in the build up to West Brom’s winner at the Riverside on September 27.

But he would rather deal with occasional criticism as a topflight goalkeeper than spend more time in a Travel Lodge on his own.

“I had difficult times while I was out on loan,” he said, drawing on the time he spent at Barnsley, Crewe and Cardiff, while he also had brief stints with Bradford and Darlington. “A few weeks ago I mentioned about staying in a Travel Lodge and how frustrating it was for me on Christmas Day and every other day.

“But it was not the standard of the hotel I was getting at, because they’re quite nice. It was getting in from training at 2pm and watching Deal or No Deal, Neighbours or whatever until bed-time. That was every day.”

Given his young age for a goalkeeper, he has a mature head on his shoulders. He talks as if he has been around the professional game for years. And, contrary to the general perception about goalkeepers, he doesn’t seem to be mad.

“Everyone always says that, but I’m not,” insisted Turnbull, who tends to relax by playing golf or swinging a club on Tiger Woods’ golf on the Xbox.

“I was having this conversation with Stephen Pears the other day. He was saying that most are stupid and daft. I was saying ‘I’m not’. You have to grow up quickly in this game, you can’t be a kid.”

Having recently celebrated the birth of his first child, Maisy, with his partner Nicola, there is now fatherhood to keep him grounded too. “He’s a natural with her and he’s adjusted quickly,” said Nicola, who admits to having little interest in football.

And it is, Ross’ father feels, his life outside of football that will ensure he continues to maintain a grip on reality amid the spotlight that will inevitably grow if his career continues to gather momentum.

“We brought him up in the right way, supported him,”

said Steve, whose elder son, Craig, ‘Has done well for himself as a solicitor and could have made it as a footballer but he lacked the heart’.

“We have believed in him.

Ross wanted to be a professional footballer and we brought him up by telling him that he couldn’t be like a normal kid, and go out and have four or five pints, smoke, he never has done.

“He is in a great relationship with Nic and that helps too.”

His parents estimate they have travelled more than 50,000 miles to watch their son’s career progress, including a trip to Dubai for the World Youth Championships six years ago.

The trip to the Riverside Stadium for the visit of Chelsea today will do little to add to that figure, but the signs point towards the former centre-forward from Newton Aycliffe having plenty more miles left in the tank.