ANDY BUTLER - I'VE PROVED THE DOUBTERS WRONG MY WHOLE CAREER

ANDY Butler wasn't supposed to be a footballer, at least school if his secondary teachers are to be believed.

- CHRIS DUNLAVY

"I got told I'd never make it when I was 16," recalls the new Scunthorpe United manager, a veteran of 19 years and over 600 appearances in the professional game.

"But I've always been spurred on by stuff like that.

I remember when Darren Ferguson took over at Doncaster, the first thing he said to me was 'I don't think you'll be able to play in my team'.

"It wasn't psychology, either. He's not someone who minces words. I thought 'Right, we'll see'. I ended up starting nearly every game.

"People said I'd never play football at 40. I was still going last season. I was interim manager at Donny a couple of years ago and people said I'd never manage again after that. Well, here I am. It's not that I want to prove people wrong. I want to prove myself right."

By his own admission, though, Butler has required some help along the way. Paul Wilson, a tough-tackling fullback for Northampton and Burnley in his playing days, was the youth coach at Scunthorpe when Butler signed on as an apprentice in the late 90s.

"If it wasn't for him, my teachers would have been right," admits Butler. "I owe him everything. He's had that much of an influence on my life that I actually named my daughter Willow.

"I couldn't do ten kick-ups when I was given that apprenticeship. That's no exaggeration. But Paul pulled me by the arm, took me down to the corner of the stadium, and made me spend 45 minutes a day kicking a ball against the wall and practising kick-ups.

"He had us running round cricket boundaries, up hills, through forests. If you speak to any of the apprentices back then, they'll all remember how he whistled through his fingers. As soon as you heard that, you thought 'Oh no what does he know?'.

"He used to come into the changing rooms after training and say 'Alright, who was out at the weekend?'. He didn't know the answer but someone would inevitably crumble and then it would be 'Right, everyone back outside'.