Barrow may have been thumped by Chelsea on Tuesday night, but one of their players got a special memento.
Gerard Garner was given Christopher Nkunku’s shirt after the Blues forward smashed in a hat-trick during the 5-0 Carabao Cup win.
Garner featured in Barrow’s 5-0 defeat to ChelseaGetty
The League Two club were not expected to win at Stamford Bridge, but plenty of memories were created for the fans and players.
Garner is a name that might ring a few bells for people – that’s because he is a former prodigy from Merseyside who hit the headlines as a youngster.
He was famous by the age of 11 for breaking one of Wayne Rooney’s schoolboy records.
Garner hit an astonishing 76 goals in one season, surpassing Rooney’s total of 72 some 13 years before him.
The hype was already growing for him. He told The Athletic in 2022: “You’d get a lot of people saying, ‘He’s gonna play for Liverpool, him…’.”
He joined the Liverpool academy soon after and his strike partner was none other than Trent Alexander-Arnold.
On the Liverpool star, he said: “One of the best players, but when you see him as a centre-forward, you never think, ‘He’s going to be the best right-back in the world one day…’.”
Things started conspiring against him as he unfortunately broke his foot while on holiday in Egypt, playing football with some Russian holidaymakers.
That kept him out for a significant amount of time and when he returned it was a transition from nine-a-side to 11-a-side.
It was also then decided that all the Liverpool academy teams would play 4-2-3-1, often forcing him to play out of position.
Garner got Nkunku’s shirt after the gameX
Rooney had all kinds of records as a child prodigyGETTY
At 15, he left with the club signing more bright talents to increase competition.
“I remember my mum asking me as we left the meeting whether I was upset,” he said. “I told her that I wasn’t bothered, in a typical teenager sort of way.”
That was by no means the end of his story, however, has he joined Fleetwood in 2017 and was pulled into the first team by Joey Barton.
There were loans to the likes of FC United of Manchester, Southport and Gateshead before Barrow signed him for a club-record fee in January 2023.
