Liverpool-born Adam Hammill arrived on loan at Championship Southampton, full of optimism.

“If it was a choice between playing a handful of games at Liverpool (if I am lucky),” he reflected, “or 30 to 40 at Southampton, and as a young player learning the ropes, there was only one road to take.”

He may have failed to get a game for his home-town club, but he was still only 19 and had U-19 caps and a couple of medals in his cabinet, having been a Youth Cup-winner with Liverpool in 2006 and a Scottish Cup runner-up with Dunfermline, a year later. It was not the best of seasons to be a teenager at St Mary’s, hoping to “learn the ropes”. The manager, George Burley, left in mid-season, for the Scotland job; Jason Dodd and John Gorman took over for a short spell; and Nigel Pearson eventually avoided relegation on the last day.

Even so, Adam played fairly regularly, if often as sub, until February, and Liverpool evidently judged him to have learned sufficient “ropes” to warrant a five-year contract. But after two more loan-spells, the second of them with Barnsley, he moved permanently to Oakwell. He was a Championship regular, there, until Premiership Wolves took advantage of a £500,000 buy-out clause. After a patchy spell with them in the first half of 2011-12, he went out on two more Championship loans first to Middlesbrough and then, for the 2012-13 season, to Huddersfield. He was soon in trouble off-the-field. Pleading guilty, in November 2012, to assaulting two female paramedics, he received a suspended jail sentence but he seemingly did enough on it to be signed permanently in July 2013. After a settled three years at Oakwell, he moved north of the border on a short-term deal towards the end of 2018 but early in 2019 he was back in England playing in League II with Scunthorpe.