Chris Morgan opens up on tragic Sheffield United career end after ups and downs

The defender, then of Barnsley, had just finished a round of golf and after turning his phone back on, noticed a number of missed calls from a number he didn’t recognise. He hurriedly called his wife Natasha.

“I thought something may have happened to the kids or something,” he recalled, smiling at the memory two decades this month on. “But she said she’d had Neil Warnock on the phone. Between them, the two of them had agreed my move to United! He said to her: ‘Listen, I want to sign him … you don’t want to move away … you’re happy where you are …’ and it worked!

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“I got home, got some gear, went to Bramall Lane where a contract was waiting for me with John Garrett, signed the contract and got in a car to go all the way down to Cornwall for pre-season. So within 24 hours, the whole thing was done and dusted. Barnsley were in the equivalent of League One at the time and I’d had one of my worst-ever seasons, whereas United had got to both cup semi-finals and lost in the play-off final.

“I think I felt as if I’d hit a brick wall at Barnsley and when the chance came up, I saw it as a fresh start. But it was obviously difficult. I was Barnsley’s club captain and the club had took me in as a boy and I was leaving as a man. But Neil said to me: ‘We will get into the Premier League, because I will do everything I can to make it happen’. He felt he was just missing a few components. And he was proved to be right.”

Morgan did grace the Premier League again in a United shirt, captaining the Blades to promotion in 2005/06 and throughout the following campaign in the top flight before they were cruelly relegated in the midst of the Carlos Tevez Affair. “You talk about stuff that happened that season – the Gerrard penalty, the same ref not giving us one at Old Trafford when Luton Shelton was wiped out, the stuff with West Ham – and people who aren’t United fans think you’re whinging,” Morgan added. “But it’s true and it’s fact. Things like that are really ingrained in you, and it’s difficult to let go.”

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Morgan’s United career was punctuated by what-if moments. What if United had stayed up that year? What if they had been successful in the 2009 play-off final, which they lost to Burnley at a baking-hot Wembley? But arguably the biggest concerned the end of his career, after a devastating knee injury suffered against Coventry at Bramall Lane. In typically-tough Morgan fashion, he played on. It proved to be his final game.

“There was no pain, none whatsoever. I’ve heard people who’ve done it say it’s agony, but I didn’t feel a thing. It just felt loose. Very loose,” Morgan told The Star. “I insisted I would stay on and it wasn’t me being a hero or anything; there was just literally no pain and I always had a lot of movement in my knees anyway. I also had strong quads and strong hamstrings and maybe that’s what got me through it. But in the second half I couldn’t kick with my right foot and told my teammates not to pass the ball to me. I just wanted to get through the game.

“It turned out I’d ruptured my ACL, the lateral ligament that runs down the side and also the popliteus tendon. When I was told, my first response was: ‘I’ve had a good go at it then, haven’t I? I’ve tried to damage it as much as I can.’”

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Even then, Morgan was not particularly concerned about the long-term effects of such a serious injury. His surgeon, Andy Williams, warned that he may never played again. By Morgan’s own admission, “it went in one ear and out the other”. The defining moment came after his operation, when he saw the state of his knee post-surgery. “I looked down and said: ‘Oh my f****** good god. What have I done here?’

“I had an L-shape across my kneecap and towards the inside of my leg, and then six or seven inches down to the lateral ligament. It was all stapled up and the minute I saw that, it all sank in. I thought: ‘S***, I’m in trouble here’. The surgery fixed everything structurally with the knee, but we just couldn’t control the swelling.

“When you’re a professional sportsman you think you’re superhuman and can get through anything. But eventually I went to see Andy and said I’d got to a stage where I couldn’t carry on. He said I was right; that he knew, that people at United knew, but I had to make the decision.

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“I had the operation on my 33rd birthday and after two years of rehab I was 35 and people were saying I’d only be 65 or 70 per cent of the player I was before. I’m not taking the mick here but I wasn’t the most technically gifted player. Being commanding, going and winning the tackles and the headers, that was my game. So I was thinking: ‘If I can’t do that, what am I going to be able to do?’

“One of my biggest regrets is not having one last game to look back on. Thinking that Coventry game at home was my last ever game of football is sometimes hard to accept.”

After a spell in coaching, and two as United’s caretaker boss, Morgan is now an agent and looks back on his Blades career with nothing but fondness. “The club has been a massive part of my life,” Morgan said. “A huge part of my life. People tend to see me as a Sheffield United player, rather than Barnsley, who were also a big part of me.

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“To captain the club was a proud time for me and I get a lot of young Blades now coming up to me and saying: ‘You were my mum or dad’s favourite player’. Or even their grandad’s in some cases! For people to refer to you as a legend is quite embarrassing at times because you obviously don’t see yourself as that. I just saw myself as a player and part of a team. But to be remembered with the all-time greats of Sheffield United – like Tony Currie or Brian Deane – it’s a privilege and an honour, really.

“Supporters in South Yorkshire are hard-workers and grafters. My dad worked 12 to 14 hours a day so I grew up in an environment where nothing was handed to you. At Barnsley and United, you know what the supporters want because most of them have done a week’s graft to come and watch you. “And they expect their players to go out and put that work in too, to represent them as a group of fans.

“I like to think that, with the way I played, I did that.”

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