ANDRE WISDOM WAS pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face when he we walked through the door at Derry City last month.
It’s one from what feels like a different lifetime.
The Liverpool academy graduate played 22 times in the club’s first team before joining Derby County in 2017. Three years later he was the victim of a brutal knife attack that derailed his career.
Wisdom was only 27 and had played 50 times in the Premier League after loan spells with West Brom and Norwich City when he was stabbed in the head and buttocks.
Now 31, Derry now offers him the chance to add a Premier Division and FAI Cup Double to the one he won in Austria while on loan with RB Salzburg seven years ago.
Wisdom also scored in the final of the U17 European Championships as England triumphed against Spain in 2010, by which point the defender was a rising star at Liverpool.
He didn’t cross paths with Daniel Cleary, the Shamrock Rovers defender who was slightly younger at Anfield around that time and will face off at the Ryan McBride Brandywell this evening.
But Patrick McEleney was courted by Liverpool as a teenager and made such a lasting impression that the Candystripes’ captain was instantly recognisable almost two decades later.
“When I saw his face I 100% remembered him, even though the gaffer doesn’t believe me,” Wisdom said.
Sitting next to the defender was his manager, Ruaidhrí Higgins, and he was quick to interject. “That’s one thing about Patrick, he’s a football encyclopaedia, that boy,” Higgins said. “[He] used to go back and forward to Liverpool as a kid, one of the 20 clubs trying to sign him at the time. Patrick was training and playing with Andre as 14-year-olds.”
But there were others who Higgins and his staff leaned on for character references when Wisdom became available. He was with Warrington Town in England’s sixth tier – National League North – and all of the feedback about him was “top notch.”
Higgins added: “And then you read interviews or listen to interviews that he’s done about his hunger. He obviously had a really tough time in his life where he was out of the game and his hunger to get back into it.”
The course of Wisdom’s career changed when he was stabbed after refusing to hand over his watch to a masked gang after attending a family members’ party in Liverpool.
Derry is not where he envisaged seeing himself when Brendan Rodgers handed him a Liverpool debut, but that incident helped him to re-evaluate life and what comes his way.
“Just to be grateful. Any opportunity is a good one and once I spoke to the manager and the ambition the club has, the ambition he has for his players and what he wanted to achieve, what he wanted the team to do, I was sold.
“I’m grateful for every opportunity given, grateful to be training everyday, injury free. To get the opportunity to play and help the team, long may it continue. So yeah, short and sweet.
“When you have physical injuries, obviously it’s physical, then the mental side you wish it didn’t happen and those types of thing,” Wisdom said.
“To get through it best is to look forward, don’t look in the past and take each day as it comes. If you’re working towards something, it’s not a rush, everyone goes at different times, I’m glad I’m here.
“Training has been really good, the games have been good to be a part of. It’s great competition. I’m just grateful and looking forward to the challenge.”
Even after what he has been through, silverware remains a motivating factor for Wisdom. Derry are second, four points off Shelbourne with the same advantage over Rovers in third.
It means tonight’s clash has even greater importance, both in terms of trying to rein in the leaders and keeping the four-in-a-row champions at bay with seven games (including this one) to play.
“It would mean a lot. It’s great playing, it’s a boy’s dream to be playing, to be on the pitch, but when you hang up your boots and finish football, they’re the things that you cherish the most and you look back on those specials days, whether it’s cup finals or league titles or any medal you can get hold of really, they all count.”
Tonight – Live RTÉ 2: Derry City v Shamrock Rovers, 7.45pm.
