“We were all shaking the big Champions League banner [in the centre circle]. It’s heavier than it looks!”
Notts County defender Connell Rawlinson is recalling one of his favourite memories as an Everton academy player.
“Every player at Under-13 level would have a season as ball boys,” he explains. “My turn was the year Everton qualified for the Champions League and we played Villarreal at home.
“That night was amazing. I remember the noise being that loud, it was deafening, squealing. I go to as many games as I can and I’ve never heard an atmosphere like it.”
The centre-back is 29 now but played for his beloved Blues from the age of ten through to sixteen. Being on the pitch with Everton on the cusp of playing in Europe’s elite competition in 2005 is just one moment which sticks in his mind.
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As a teenager, Rawlinson lived his dream and played alongside Jack Rodwell and Jose Baxter, who on Sunday, announced his retirement from the game before the age of 30.
Thirteen years ago, the talented frontman broke James Vaughan’s record to become Everton’s youngest ever senior player when he came on against Blackburn Rovers on the opening day of the 2008-09 season at the age of 16 years and 191 days.
Boasting supreme ability on the ball, Rawlinson wasn’t surprised to see Baxter break into the first-team just like Wayne Rooney before and Ross Barkley after him.
“They’re the type of players you’d compare him to, technically very gifted,” he says. “The ball would be bouncing around and he’d strike a half volley from 40 yards and drop it on a ten pence piece!
“Jose was exceptionally good. He had a good understanding of the game and had vision off the ball as well as on it. It was God-given talent but he worked hard to master his craft and was a pleasure to watch at times.”
Seeing his team-mate handed a chance by manager David Moyes at such a young age was a huge boost for Rawlinson and the other hopefuls looking to make the grade.
“We had a quite close-knit group when I was here at Everton - all the parents would come away on the tours and outside of football we would meet up - so to see someone make it who had played at your age group was a special moment.”
Baxter would go on to make 15 appearances for the Blues before spells with Sheffield United, Oldham and Plymouth.
In announcing his decision to hang up his boots this weekend, the former forward admitted he felt he had underachieved after ‘silly mistakes got in the way’ and halted his career.
Speaking to the ECHO days before Baxter would make his announcement, Rawlinson said of footballer’s careers in general: “Sometimes things happen. One door shuts, another one opens and you have to go where your path takes you. Sometimes it is out of your hands.”
While Baxter perhaps didn’t fulfil his potential, the same can be said for Rodwell.
The midfielder, who turned 30 in March, came through the Everton ranks and made more than 100 first-team appearances before signing a five-year deal with Manchester City in 2012.
With competition fierce at the Etihad Stadium, Rodwell managed just 25 appearances before joining Sunderland. There, game-time was sparse too, and he played a total of 76 games in four campaigns at the Stadium of Light.
Now, more than two decades after he joined Everton as a seven-year-old, Rodwell, who was capped by England during his time with the Toffees, is a free agent having been released by Sheffield United.
Back in the academy days though, he was the best player, according to Rawlinson.
“He was exceptional and you could see it from a very young age,” he says. “You do have a lot of players at academy level but you can see who the ones that are going to make it into the first-team.
“Jack was physically there at an early age - very big, strong, and technically, he was brilliant.
“It’s good to have been able to play with players like that coming through because you try and look up to them and try and base your game on them. You learn, listen and try to take every bit of their knowledge and tactical sense.”
Rodwell has spent the majority of his professional career in midfield though as a kid, he was a centre-back and even compared to Rio Ferdinand, such was his ability to bring the ball out from the back.
Rawlinson, bumped up a year to play eleven-a-side football, featured alongside Rodwell and remembers a player who boasted a silky sophistication in possession.
“He was very suave with the ball at his feet. He was powerful, strong, fast. As he got older, they pushed him into a central midfield role. If he wanted to play centre-half he could, if he wanted to play central midfield he could, he had that in his locker.
“I’m a centre-half and you wouldn’t be bumping me into midfield, I can tell you that!” he jokes.
A boyhood Blue who has played for TNS in Wales as well as Chester, Port Vale and now Notts County, can Rawlinson understand a player’s decision to leave the club they grew up with like Rodwell and Wayne Rooney did?
“I’m a Blue through and through but you’ve always got to be looking to improve,” he admits.
“The game itself is a short career. If you have aspirations to play at the highest level and progress to the point where you think you’ve hit a roof, you may need to leave as a footballer. It’s understandable if offers come in from clubs going places.
“On the flip side, if Rodwell had stayed at Everton, he could have been a legend,” Rawlinson says objectively. “It’s one of them, how do you weigh it up?
“For me, I want to leave a bit of a legacy now and make some history with Notts. I’m creeping up to the 100 game mark. I want to leave my stamp rather than chase something else.
“It’s different agendas for different people. You look at Jack Grealish (who has joined Man City), a diehard Aston Villa fan but sometimes you have to break away to prove yourself even more.”
Sadly for Rawlinson, his exit from Everton was made for him when he was 16 and he admits tears were shed having grown up supporting the club.
“It was a tough moment but when you’re in a career like we are, it is very cut-throat football; you shouldn’t get down-hearted and being released was a catalyst for me.
“I could have gone one way or the other really: packing it in because it hurt or using the disappointment to push me on.
“I’ve never been the most gifted but I’ve always had the right mentality to push myself and I’ve not been scared to make mistakes to get to where I want to go.”
Since being let go, he has forged a career consisting of more than 300 games. In that time, Rawlinson has always valued the guidance of one former Blue during his formative years with Everton.
“One person who did give me a lot of advice and I still think about it to this day was Gary Ablett,” he reveals. “He did a lot of individual work with me and was great. It was an awful shame (when Ablett passed away in 2012) but he always sticks in my memory and really helped me.”
Growing up at Everton, Rawlinson played alongside the likes of Adam Forshaw, now with Leeds, Ipswich midfielder Jon Nolan, Hope Akpan, who was 'always smiling' and Tranmere new boy Callum McManaman.
"We had a very steady group,” he says, and fondly remembers trips to Boston in the States for football tours.
“It’s a great experience for a young lad, it’s all paid for and you’re in a little bubble with the team."
Training at Bellefield, he clocked David Ginola just before the Frenchman signed, much to the delight of his mother, who would ferry him to training after school.
Paul Gascoigne was another football legend who joined Everton at that time, in the early 2000s, and managed to get Rawlinson on the Goodison pitch in typical Gazza fashion.
“One of my pals was mascot for the day, so I was in the Gwladys Street with my Dad and started shouting ‘Tom! Tom!’ He’s seen me and waved while stood next to Gazza,” he recalls.
“Gazza starts waving too, but waving me on... so my Dad takes me over the barrier but a steward comes running over shouting, ‘You can’t go on the pitch!’”
Any protests fell on deaf ears.
“Gazza brings me on to see my mate and gives me his rain jacket that he was warming up in. I’ve still got it.”
Rawlinson would soon get pitchside again, as a ballboy this time, and he and his team-mates got so close to the action, sometimes they even influenced it.
“There was a little bit of dark arts back in the day,” he jokingly admits, “You know, ‘don’t throw the ball back too quick if Everton are winning’.
“It was great - you weren’t really allowed to celebrate and had to try and remain calm but I had a seat behind the goal and most of the time, I wasn’t sitting, I was jumping up and down!
“I remember Callum McManaman, he was a ball boy too and ran on, jumping on the pile of players celebrating by the corner flag!”
Having started his career with one historic club in Everton, Rawlinson is now at another, the oldest in fact, and is enjoying his time with Notts County.
“All you’ve got to do is walk around the stadium, see the pictures of the legends and you can really feel it. There is a real buzz and I’m very proud to have the opportunity here.”
Now entering his third season with the Magpies after signing a new two-year deal in June, there is one aim.
“Promotion,” he says. “For me, anything less would be classed as a disappointing season.
“Playing for a club of this stature, you do have pressure and you do have expectation but I wouldn’t have it another way because otherwise what are we doing it for? To finish mid-table? I wouldn’t get the buzz and wouldn’t be able to give my all knowing there is no pressure or expectation on what you’re doing.
“The structure of the club is there for League One, I’d even say pushing the Championship. The stadium is great, the training facilities; it’s run very professionally.”
Rawlinson’s hometown club Wrexham are in the same division and have made big headlines following a takeover by Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and, after signing last season’s League Two top scorer Paul Mullin this summer, they are the favourites to go up.
However, Rawlinson believes the National League will be fiercely competitive this season.
“This year is the strongest it’s been for well over a decade,” he claims. “Ourselves, Chesterfield, Torquay, Southend, Grimsby, Wrexham; there are a lot of big ex-league clubs and the standard is going to be very high.
“I think over the last five years, the standard of non-League football has gone up tremendously, it’s classed as non-League but at the minute the National League is as strong as League Two would be. The top six or seven teams would all hold their own.
“You want it to be competitive, you want to win something and say you’ve won it on merit, not because it’s an easy league. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can achieve.”
From the weight of the Champions League banner at Goodison Park to the weight of expectation at Meadow Lane, others may have made the grade with the Everton first-team but it is Rawlinson who is now racking up the games and eyeing success.
