'I walked into the sixth-form common room on Monday morning, before lessons began, and Marcus Rashford was playing pool with one of the other sixth-form boys,' the school's headteacher, Aidan Moloney, told the Telegraph external-link at the time. Timothy Fosu-Mensah, another Ashton on Mersey pupil, had also made his Premier League debut in the game. The day before, the 18-year-old had scored two goals in a 3-2 win over Arsenal. Rashford was similarly punctual on a Monday in February 2016. I actually stopped the lesson so that he could talk to the kids about his experiences the night before. 'But the next morning, he was in school on time for 08:45. 'He had played really well, and he didn't sleep when he got home because the adrenaline was still flowing thorough his system. Ashton on Mersey School was rated as good in its last Ofsted inspection in 2019 'Darren Fletcher had made his debut as an 18-year-old the previous evening in the Champions League against FC Basel,' Law remembers. Less than five years later, on a Thursday morning in March 2003, Law had to hurriedly change his lesson plan. 'There was the headmaster and United finance director David Gill and, at the end, United wrote a cheque for £100,000,' Law says. Soon afterwards, he found himself in a meeting. But a contact from his days coaching local youth teams was at United. Law was a Manchester City apprentice in his youth. 'I went to a conference down in Loughborough, where they mentioned that a lot of Premier League clubs were looking to link up with schools.' external-link A lot of schools were scrabbling around for the money. 'Ashton on Mersey wanted to be a sports college, but you needed £100,000 of private sponsorship. 'It came out of the specialist college initiative in the late 1990s,' he remembers. The link is the longest such relationship in England.ĭavid Law, former head of PE at Ashton on Mersey, saw how it started and how it blossomed.

Manchester Grammar School, a private school that partnered more recently with United, is half an hour's drive from United's Carrington training ground.īut Ashton on Mersey, a state school in Sale, is closer and takes on more of the club's prospects. Sometimes, though, as players get older, as they join the academy from further afield, as their football becomes more time-consuming, it makes sense to switch to a school set up for the demands on an aspiring Premier League star. 'I am a big believer that you stay at home, with your family, in your own bed, with your mates at school for as long as possible.' 'We will build amazing relationships with those schools to make sure we are communicating regularly and dovetail their programme with ours. 'Many, many, many of our boys will stay at their own schools,' says Nick Cox, Manchester United's academy director, and a former teacher himself. It is a school where future stars are today's students. The photo was taken at Ashton on Mersey School, where batches of United's academy prospects have been walking the corridors for 25 years. At the front, is the most familiar face Manchester United star Marcus Rashford.

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