Carter Stevenson wants to follow in the football boots of his famous and far-travelled father. Having turned 14 last month, he’s in his first season at the Ayr United academy, being coached by his old man and dreaming of getting right to the top of the game.
Dad Ryan Stevenson’s football journey, which took him from Somerset Park and Stamford Bridge to Troon and Tynecastle among many other places, is a big inspiration to his schoolboy son. But, while Carter has designs on chasing the same career path, he insists that following in the family tradition doesn’t extend as far as copying his father’s head-to-toe tattoos.
‘I got my first tattoo at his age,’ says Ryan, sitting alongside his boy at the kitchen table in his Monkton home. ‘I must have had somewhere between 40 and 50 since then. There aren’t too many gaps.’
His favourite tattoo, on his back, shows him walking out of the Tynecastle tunnel as Hearts captain in 2013, hand-in-hand with Carter, who was a toddler then and mascot for the day. But his teenage lad is in no hurry to be similarly adorned.
Carter casts a glance at his dad and says: ‘I mean, they’re alright, his tattoos. Some of them are quite cool. I might get a couple when I’m a bit older, but not as many as him. And not up at my neck like he has.’
Ryan nods in agreement: ‘We’ve got a rule. And I know it’s a bit rich coming from me. If ever he does get a tattoo, he’ll take his time with it, which I never did. And he would need to think about where they’re going and what that means as he gets older.
Ryan Stevenson and his eldest son Carter, who is currently on the books at Ayr United
‘I think back now and ask if I would have changed that about me. But, no, it’s who I am. I’m a firm believer that I have to be who I am. Do I regret it? Of course, I regret parts of it. Was it to do with discipline? Probably. It was just that era of: “I’m a footballer, I can do whatever I want” sort of thing. I used to think school was rubbish, football was all that mattered.
‘I’m the total opposite with Carter and I’ll be the same with my younger boy Brady if he goes down the football academy path. I want them to have so much fun in life, I want them to be happy, but they also have to understand it takes a lot of hard work to get where you want to go. There are so many outside factors that can get in the way.’
Carter has no memory of seeing his dad play. He was still too young by the time Ryan hung up his boots.
‘I don’t really remember anything at that time,’ says Carter, ‘because I was too young to go and watch the games by the time he stopped playing.’
Ryan chips in: ‘I was 34 or 35 when I retired from playing so he would have been six or seven. Carter was born when I was at Ipswich. Then I went back to Hearts. He came to a few Partick Thistle games but he was really young and, the way things were at that time, it wasn’t a great idea. One of my biggest regrets is that he never really saw me play.’
It’s Carter’s turn to interrupt. ‘But, dad, I’ve seen some of the old TV coverage, though. One of my teachers at school in Troon told me to go and watch his goal for Ayr against Alloa and I was, like: “Wow”. He dribbled past four people and just scored. I was, like: “Jeez”. And he told me to watch clips of him playing for Hearts and they were pretty good.
‘My pals ask me what he was like as a player. I tell them he just gets the ball and shoots. It doesn’t matter where he is on the pitch, he just shoots.’
Stevenson was a success across two spells at Hearts, helping them to the Scottish Cup in 2012
Ryan, having kicked off his senior career at St Johnstone, had three memorable spells with hometown team Ayr and two successful stints with Hearts. In the 2013 League Cup final at Hampden, he scored both goals for the Tynecastle team in a 3-2 defeat to St Mirren.
His career could all have gone in a completely different direction. When he was Carter’s age, Ryan was strolling the streets of London.
‘Yeah, at his stage I was at Chelsea,’ he explains. ‘I’d left the local Kingsmead Boys Club at 11 and went to Hearts for 18 months. I was on the same pathway as Carter, but the young Hearts team played Celtic at Harthill and the chief scout from Chelsea was there. He was watching the Celtic centre forward. I was playing centre-half that day and he must have liked how I played against him. It might have been because he was standing next to my dad.
‘A few days later, I was down in London with my folks signing the forms. I flew down on a Friday and back up on a Monday for just over a year and had the full weekend in London. Then everyone came to an agreement that I could get my schooling down there and stay down full time.
‘It was amazing. But, would I change it? Probably. I was on my own. It came out of the blue for my mum and dad as much as it did for me. The experience was unbelievable.
‘Should I have done better? Probably. But I look at Carter and he’s much more level-headed than I was. I was travelling around London when I was his age, staying in digs, and nowadays I find it hard to comprehend. It’s scary, looking back. And maybe my experience, and the things I got right and wrong, can help him.’
Ryan was at Chelsea until he was 18. His youth team boss back then was Steve Clarke, now Scotland manager. ‘Stevie gave me two weeks off at Christmas because I’d tweaked my hamstring,’ he recalls.
‘Chelsea had offered me a new deal. I was a regular with the reserves and I’d been in and around the first team for the Charity Shield and some European games. But I came back up during my fortnight off and I went out with my friends. I looked at Boydie (Kris Boyd) who was playing for Kilmarnock and then going back home to his pals in Tarbolton.
Stevenson caught the eye of Chelsea as a youngster and spent over three years in London
‘I was thinking I’ve got nine days up home and I’m off back down the road. Back to being in digs on my own. Again, maybe it was that hard-headedness, the same with the tattoos, but I decided I’d had enough. I went straight back down and told Chelsea I wanted to leave.
‘It was homesickness. One hundred per cent. There were no mobiles. I got to phone home every Sunday. I had a chat with my mum and dad and that was it till the next Sunday.
‘I realise I was in a tremendous position. But they froze me out, they stopped me from flying back home. From that Christmas all the way through till the end of the season, to try to get the homesickness out of me. But that just pushed me in the opposite direction.
‘When I left two or three months later, (owner Roman) Abramovich was just coming in. Two of my pals at Chelsea were Robert Huth, who went on to win two league titles at the club, and Carlton Cole, who played for England.
‘Ultimately, you look back and think about what would have happened if I’d stayed on. But then I think I had four and a half years on my own at Carter’s age. I missed a big chunk of my childhood.
Ryan wants his boy to learn from his experience and forge his own path towards career in football..
‘He’s got good attributes to his game,’ says the proud father. ‘He’s a centre back. He’s aggressive, he can play. He’s very fit and he’s got a sensible head on him at the moment.
Stevenson insists Carter has a sensible head and will avoid some of the pitfalls he encountered
‘I love watching him. It gives me more joy than when I was playing myself. But I’ve told him he can’t afford to take his foot off the gas and he has to do all the right things.
‘The era I grew up in, I went out and got tattooed. Didn’t care. Went out at weekends, drinking and going to nightclubs. It’s obviously changed since then.
‘I think he’s in the best possible place just now because he’s living at home, still has his friends, he has school which is so important and the bottom line is that, if he’s good enough, he’ll make it.
‘At Ayr, by the time he gets to 15 or 16, he could be knocking on the door of the first team.
Carter adds: ‘That’s what I was thinking. If I can eventually get into the first team at Ayr then people from other clubs will see me playing and I can keep on going up and up.
‘I’d be happy to make it at any team but I’d love to play against Rangers and Celtic or even play in the Premier League in England. That’s my dream, to be honest.’
