Manchester United’s old rites of passage built some characters but broke others | Daniel Taylor

The stories Gary Neville and Robbie Savage tell of 1990s initiations can be seen as lads being lads but it is time the club admitted that in some case the culture damaged lives

As Gary Neville will be able to testify, making love to Clayton Blackmore in front of the entire Manchester United first team was not the most pleasurable experience of his years as an up-and-coming player in the club’s apprentice ranks.

Not the real Clayton Blackmore, obviously. But the players who set up the game called “Shag Sunbed” – maybe you remember Blackmore’s all-year tan – did their best to make it authentic, sticking a life-size picture of him on the treatment table, slipping on some Barry White and then watching as Neville, or whoever else had been called out, had to dance round the table, seduce his man and, in front of everybody, simulate sex, sound effects and all. “I can’t tell you how excruciating that is for a 16-year-old in front of an audience of his heroes like Mark Hughes and Bryan Robson,” Neville writes in his autobiography.

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from Football | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2QWjGYN