RYAN McLaughlin is a dream interviewee. The Rochdale defender is keen to promote his boxing podcast Brawl Boxing he co-hosts with Ciaran McCourt and Colm McGuigan. But nothing’s off limits.
He could talk boxing all day. Lockdown life. His football career to date.
He will also regale you in everything he knows about plantar fasciitis because it plagued him for the best part of last year.
He’ll wax lyrical about his love of all things Liverpool and things he might have done differently. Call of Duty gets a mention and learning from “genius” coaches who taught him how to defend the “back stick”.
The great thing about the Northern Ireland international is you don’t have to drill too deeply because he’ll do that for you.
The affable 26-year-old was back doing what he does best for League One side Rochdale last weekend popping up with a stoppage-time assist to ensure a share of the spoils against Wigan Athletic that lifts them above the relegation zone.
With a couple of loan spells sandwiched in between, the west Belfast man spent five blissful years at Liverpool Football Club. There are things he’d change but joining Liverpool as a 16-year-old from Glenavon isn’t one of them.
He moved on to Oldham for two seasons before a brief pits-stop at Blackpool to his current station. One good thing came out of the first lockdown last March – he managed to shake off the effects of plantar fasciitis.
“They say it looks like a fracture in your foot when they first see it,” McLaughlin explains.
“The feeling is like somebody stabbing you in the foot every time you plant it. I had that for ages. I was playing three or four games and then it would come back again, and that was for literally six or seven months of the season.
“Lockdown actually shook it off. A lot of rest and exercises helped. I thought it would still be there after lockdown but it wasn’t.”
Call of Duty has probably replaced his love of watching football over the past seven or eight months.
“Obviously starting this season with no fans, it’s been really weird.
“I’ve barely watched games on TV. It’s like there is no passion in the match for you to get emotionally involved in it. I’d be usually buzzing for Liverpool games but it’s not the same.”
Approaching his peak years, Rochdale – who are managed by Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s son Brian (42) - could well get the best out of McLaughlin over the next couple of seasons, injury permitting.
He has no hang-ups with looking in his rear view mirror either. In his younger days, there were loan spells he probably should have taken – to gain more experience – but admits he was “too fussy” in his choices.
“It’s the mental battle that people don’t see in football. There are probably more downs than ups. Once a positive comes around and you get a run of games and you’re playing really well, you’ve got it in the back of your head that there’s going to be a blip here, a drop of some kind, something bad is going to happen because football is so up and down. It’s like a rollercoaster.
“Every player has them. When I was at Liverpool I was set to make my first team debut twice and I got injured before those games. But you look at the good things that have happened for you as well. You need so much luck in football too, and a lot of that is staying injury-free and being in the right place at the right time.
“I left Liverpool on loan to Aberdeen [in 2015] to get games and all the right-backs got injured at Liverpool and the player who was actually on the bench for me in the reserves ended up making his debut for Liverpool first team because I couldn’t come back. Wee things like that.”
He adds: “I actually regret not going out on loan more. I went to Barnsley in the Championship when I was 19. It was when Paddy McCourt was there and I had a really good first six months’ football with them. They wanted me to go back but they went down to League One and I wanted to go to another Championship club.
“Rotherham were interested but they were low down and fighting relegation in the Championship and I didn’t really want to do that. I wanted to go to a club where I could show my attacking play. But I was too fussy and I shouldn’t have been as fussy as I was.
“That is probably something I look back on and regret a little bit. I should have taken the loans that came in for me. For any young player now, you go out on loan straight away to get games.”
He keeps in touch with many former team-mates and coaching staff at Liverpool and was asked to do some punditry work for LFCTV. During his visit back to Anfield, Rhys Williams came up in conversation with one of the club’s coaching staff.
There were raised eyebrows when the talented defender was loaned out to Conference side Kidderminster. What was to be gained from the rough and tumble of non-league football?
Plenty, as it turned out.
“When you’re young, you think: ‘Oh, I can’t go there. It’ll be shit.’ But you don’t realise the effect that it will have on you in the long-term.
“Rhys Williams went to Kidderminster and was playing Champions League last year. He went there to improve. Fair play to Liverpool for sending him out there.”
Although there were some regrets for McLaughlin there were so many positives through staying at Anfield and the various coaches he was lucky to work under.
How a player performs in academy football isn’t always an accurate barometer of a player’s ability to cope with the rigours of the pro game.
“I wouldn’t have changed my experience for the world because of the people I met and the experiences I had. The coaches I played under… Michael Beale, who is assistant at Rangers, is a genius.
“Rodolfo Borrell, who is assistant to Pep Guardiola. Alex Inglethorpe, who is head of Liverpool academy now. They are just unbelievable coaches because they can spot your weaknesses. They’ll target it and they would set up the drills and just watch you.
“I was shit at defending the back post from a cross and they just would have hammered it, and now I’d say it’s one of my biggest strengths.”
He adds: "I never defended like that because academy football is all on the ground. So, as soon as I went into men’s football I was able to deal with it straight away. They made sure that was a strength before I went out on my first loan [to Barnsley in 2014].
"I was used to us having the ball all the time; I’d be playing right wing from right back. I was just interested in trying to skin players but you could get a loan and the team you were going to could be struggling and you could be doing something completely different where you’re defending for 85 minutes. You need to be solid for a manager to trust you. All a first team manager cares about is results.
"I’m really glad I signed for Liverpool. I still keep in touch with a lot of people at the club.”
As he continues to rediscover his best form after a year of injury woe, McLaughlin doesn’t rule out a post-playing career in the media.
Brawl Boxing – the podcast he co-hosts @BrawlBoxing – has had some of the biggest names in boxing on the show as guests including Billy Joe Saunders and Carl Frampton.
“I find boxers aren’t representing a club, they are representing themselves, so they’ve a bit more licence to talk to you and tell you things,” McLaughlin explains.
“I wanted to hear their stories. I was properly hooked on boxing since around the age of 15 and I’m loving the podcast at the minute with Brian and Colm. So hopefully it keeps growing and people continue to tune in.”
