Every Thursday, I will share my story of trying to achieve my dream to become a professional goalkeeper as a child, to getting rejected time and time again - Hopefully my stories will inspire you(or your goalkeeper child) to achieve your goalkeeping dreams. PLEASE SHARE this story with any young goalkeeper (or parent) who are struggling! From the age of 13, I had trials with three or four professional clubs almost every season. But time after time, I came home with the same message: “You are not good enough.” Those words hurt more every time I heard them. Parents who watched me play every week told my dad I was good enough. My dad believed in me too. Yet the clubs kept saying no. It got worse when lads from my school and Sunday team started getting signed by pro academies. I was happy for them, but it hurt. Some of them, in my honest opinion, were no better than me. I’d go home wondering what I was doing wrong! So, you can imagine, when I got to the end of my school year and everyone was leaving school, I thought my dream was over. I grew up on a council estate in Liverpool, and probably every friend I had at the time was expected to leave school, get any job and bring home a wage. Thankfully, my parents were different. They never once pressured me to give up football. They told me to keep training, keep believing, keep going and stay on at school. But, as you can imagine, again I thought my dream was over because, when I got to the end of my SECOND year in sixth form and I was just three months away from my 18th birthday, I made the decision that I could no longer expect my parents to keep supporting me. I needed to find a job. However, then everything changed WITHIN THREE WEEKS!!! With three months of school remaining, a mate called Roy Muscat got me a trial, and I signed for St Helens Town Reserves. I’d played three games when I was told I’d be playing for the first team because the first-team keeper, Joe Paladino, had gone on trial with Wigan Athletic. My reserve-team manager, John Davies, told me he believed I was good enough to go professional and that he had invited an Everton scout to watch me.