“Mate, I tell… I’m there on my first day. I’m on my first day at Man United. I don’t know what to expect,” Rathbone told Football Presse. “I’ve never had a role at a club where I’m not the physio.”
Instead of observing from the sidelines, he was thrown straight into training.
“Warren Joyce says, ‘Come on, Baz, get changed.’ I thought, ‘Thank God for that,’ because to do the job you need to be inside it — out on the pitch with the players running, laughing, passing the ball.”
The session began with possession boxes.
“I’m on the outside and everyone’s looking at this old guy wondering what the hell’s going on.”
Then the ball came to him.
“The ball gets shuffled to me by Jesse Lingard… Miqueita closes me down… I slip it through his legs back across the box. Everybody stops. Everybody’s laughing because I’d knocked him down.”
But that was just the start.
When it came to brutal shuttle races, Nicky Butt made it competitive.
“Butty says, ‘I want to see a winner.’”
Shinji Kagawa, returning from injury, was told he could race Rathbone at the end.
“Shinji comes over and says, ‘Can I top up fitness?’ Warren says, ‘You can run against Baz at the end.’ So everyone’s laughing.”
Then came the showdown.
“We start off… first line and back, second line back, we’re neck and neck. The lads are all cheering, ‘Come on, Baz.’”
And in the final stretch:
“I say in my book, ‘I’m sorry, Shinji, you seem a lovely guy and you’re undoubtedly a world-class player, but this is my day.’ And I just changed gear and left him for dead.”
The reaction?
“Everyone’s on the floor laughing. He’s laughing his head off as well.”
On his very first day, Rathbone had earned his place.