You’re an aspiring young journalist and Liverpool-mad supporter chancing your arm for an interview by knocking unannounced on the door at the club’s training ground.
Soon after pitching your request, the Reds manager himself invites you in for an exclusive, at-length chat.
For Mark Platt, what feels like a fantasy tale truly was reality – and became a stepping stone to almost 25 years’ ongoing service with LFC itself.
“I was always obsessed with football, everything to do with it. I used to read everything about it,” Mark, now the club’s curator/historian, tells Liverpoolfc.com.
“I used to like English in school. So, that’s what I wanted to do: sports journalism. I went on a journalism course at Liverpool Community College, which wasn’t far from Melwood.
“A group of us, all Liverpool fans, were on a project and had to go out and bring a story back. I was like, ‘Let’s go to Melwood.’
“Graeme Souness was the manager, it must have been 1992 or 1993. We knocked on the gate and said, ‘Can we speak to Graeme Souness? We’re from the college.’
“The fella goes, ‘Come in, lads. I’ll go and speak to him.’ He comes back and goes, ‘He’s going to get a shower and he’ll come and speak to you when he’s finished.’
“True to his word, Souness came out and must have given us a good half an hour, 40 minutes and we were firing all sorts of questions at him.
“We wrote the article up and actually sold it to a magazine. That obviously gave me the taste for it.”
Indeed, Mark and his peers went on to launch their own publication, Xtra Time, initially covering Merseyside sport.
It was subsequently commissioned by Mercury Press Agency and later focused solely on Liverpool, becoming a fortnightly release between 1993 and 1995.
“We’d be in the press box at Anfield reporting on games, it was a proper job but never felt like real work. We’d go to the away games, we’d be at Melwood nearly every day,” he recalls.
“That was amazing as a grounding. Before it started, I could have gone to university to do journalism, I got a place.
“But then this was on offer. What do you do? ‘I can’t turn this down.’ I would never change that.
“I’ve always had interest in the club’s history, so I’d be interviewing former players. Building up knowledge, building up contacts. That was great.”
