And while many go on to play with the first team, or enter professional football for other teams, some take a wrong turn and enter the wrong crowd.
For 31-year-old academy graduate Jamie Menagh, his career soon went downhill after featuring for a number of teams in the English Football League.During his career, he played in the FA Cup playing in the first round against Southend back in 2014.
Most of his career was spent with stints lower down in the leagues in England as well as making appearances in Wales’ top flight.
This week he was sentenced at Mold Crown Court to seven and a half years in prison for his role in a gang operation that saw £250million of class-A drugs smuggled into the country.
Menagh’s path to drug sentence
Featuring for Liverpool’s academy as a young child, Menagh received his first professional contract for Blackpool, before subsequent moves to Chester FC, Marine FC and Stockport County.Most recently, he featured for Lower Breck FC which is based in the Anfield region of Liverpool, where he signed from Bangor City back in the summer of 2020.
According to the Liverpool Echo, it is unknown when Menagh began his involvement in smuggling cocaine and heroin into the country, but the operation was taken apart by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) earlier this year.The criminal network that Menagh was a part of used trailers to conceal the substances and utilised the Eurotunnel to transport the drugs that originated in South America.
Overall, the plot has been estimated to involve £250million worth of substances.
