Despite making the club £35m in transfer fees, and being linked to a return to the club almost every six months since, if it wasn't for the interference of one legendary scout and a Newcastle coach, he would never have had a chance to play for the club's first team. The scout was Peter Kirkley - a legend at Wallsend Boys Club - who had been head of youth recruitment at Newcastle. As the club seriously considered whether Carroll - then a winger - was good enough, Kirkley and Vince Hutton fought to keep him, and he was given a second chance as Kirkley remembered:
"A lot of people didn't want him to stay. It got to the stage in his Under 14 year when the coaches still wanted him out. He looked ungainly and untidy. I think that is what it was. For two or three years that was going on, the coaches didn't fancy him" "The day his mam and dad went in with him to find out his future, he was expecting to be released. He was 14 and he thought it would be bad news, they all did."
Were it not for him and Hutton, Carroll might never have made it.
