Interview: Gary Mackay-Steven, Dundee United player

FOOTBALL, says Gary Mackay- Steven, can be about luck. There was a time when the Dundee United winger seemed so down on his that he was in danger of becoming one of the game’s great unfortunates.

Yet even if that is how the bleakest period in the 21-year-old’s career to date can be read from afar, it is not how the cheery Mackay-Steven chooses to recount it.

A precocious talent within Ross County’s developement programme, by the age of 16 the Thurso youth had joined the Liverpool academy set-up. A year later, injuries began to impede his progress and he was freed after failing to recover from a troublesome hip fracture. Seven months followed when he was home, unattached to any club and left clinging to the hope that a complete-rest cure would allow him a return to football. It did, but only on a part-time basis with Second Division Airdrie United.

That was early 2011. Fast forward a year and Mackay-Steven can reflect on an attention-grabbing first season at Tannadice. On Tuesday that brought him a first Scotland under-21 cap, the player turning in a decent display against the Dutch. Last month, he signed a contract extension to tie him to Dundee United until 2015, and was today also named Clydesdale Bank Young Player of the Month for February.

Beyond that, his talent has made the attacker a “YouTube sensation” because of some fancy footwork deception against St Johnstone.

Mackay-Steven’s flair for the dramatic on the park does not extend to how he charts his life off it. The Caithness youngster underplays the upsets he had to handle as a teenager. Never did he feel he might be “lost to the game” permanently , as his U21 coach Billy Stark last week said he had feared. “I never really looked at it that way,” Mackay-Steven says. “I had to work my way up [after I was out] but I always felt if I got myself fit I could go places and it has worked out that way.”

Mackay-Steven says he wasn’t hurting that no club other than Airdrie wanted to take a punt on him last year. By then he was just pleased his hip wasn’t throbbing any more, as it had on his too-early return from a stress facture in his second and final season at Anfield. Finding another club then became secondary to “getting to the bottom” of a problem that was “so niggly”. Liverpool paid for him to undergo rehab at the English National Sports Centre at Lilleshall but doctors told him a period without any exertions was the course of (in)action required. That meant going back to stay with his folks in Thurso.

“I rested the whole of seven months. I couldn’t have trained because every time I did that then the hip just throbbed so I just did nothing. No swimming or anything. I ate well, though. I’ve always looked after myself and I didn’t put any weight on,” says the slender framed 5ft 7in attacker. “And when I started back in the January [of last year] it was all good. Obviously my match fitness was down but I always had a good base and that helped me. Did I ever consider I’d have to do something else? That is at the back of your mind, obviously, but my family gave me brilliant support and my friends up there as well. And the docs never really said I wouldn’t get over it. I had exercises to do, and I still do every now and then in the gym to help my hip and core, but the rest was what helped and I always knew if I could get over the injury I would work my way back up. Airdrie gave me the chance and I’m grateful to Jimmy Boyle for that – and I’ve not looked back.”

Mackay-Steven says he never considered having to start again at Airdrie as a massive comedown following his previous posting. “I just looked upon it as the chance to play every week and show myself; and that’s what happened, thankfully.” Neither, though, did he look upon his time at Liverpool as a case of temporarily living beyond his footballing means. “You have to have faith in your own ability, and I always have had,” says Mackay-Steven.

Rafael Benitez was the manager during his time and Kenny Dalglish a club ambassador. He didn’t have much to do with either man. He played in the same youth team as Martin Kelly and Jay Spearing and developed an enduring friendship with fellow Ross County product Alex Cooper, the year below him and now back at the Dingwall club. “If you are confident you aim for the top, work hard and think you have the same chance as everybody else. You don’t feel extra pressure because there is such a high drop-out rate. You have an opportunity and you want to grasp it. You don’t think you are not going to make it and just want to improve.”

Mackay-Steven’s success in showing the value of his pacy, piercing runs at Airdrie meant his agent’s phone started to ring again last summer. A three-day trial with Inverness Caledonian Thistle ensued, but this came to nothing after he picked up an ankle knock. Peter Houston then invited him to train at Tannadice over the close seaon but budget constraints meant it wasn’t until the season had started that he could be made a contract off.

The summer “was and wasn’t” difficult because he had no deal with United. “I was just happy being in an environment where I was training every day, and things were going well,” the player says. “I felt really comfortable from day one, they welcomed me, and I was able to concentrate on my football. I always felt it would work out and luckily it did. I’d never really thought in terms of not getting a deal, I was just working to make sure I made an impression in training. I was grateful to the manager in the end for the chance, though.”

Mackay-Steven has repaid his manager’s faith many times over, his fortunes favoured by on-the-ball bravery.