Exclusive extract of Ablett's book

Ablett died during the night of January 1, 2012 after a 16-month battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but he finished his fantastic new book before passing.

In this extract the former Reds and Blues defender talks about his first impressions of Liverpool FC and trying to impress the coaching staff.

There is nothing that can prepare you for the fight against cancer.

When the diagnosis is delivered you're left numb. When you eventually come around, you're scared witless. It takes time to mentally accept what is happening to you, and dare to face the future.

But perhaps in a small way, the fact that I had faced so many challenges in my career helped me realise that this was simply another fight, albeit one that was far more serious than I had previously experienced. A fight that I had to win.

Few footballers have a seamless rise to prominence, and setting out on a career that took me from Liverpool, via Derby County and Hull City, to Everton, then on to Sheffield United, Birmingham City, Wycombe Wanderers with my old friend Lawrie Sanchez, and then Blackpool, it became clear that whenever I cleared one hurdle, another would spring up right in front of me.

All along the way, I had to push to get noticed. As a starry-eyed youngster I faced a struggle even to be taken seriously: a battle to prove to the teachers, who shook their heads and said I was making a huge mistake when I left school to pursue a career in football, that they were wrong. And, just as significantly, a constant battle to show Liverpool that they shouldn't turn my dreams to dust before I had even had a chance to realise them.

Back when I was starting out, it was Tuesday and Thursday nights, not Saturday afternoons, around which my world revolved. I'd finish school and get the 61 bus from Aigburth Vale to West Derby - the fare was about 50p - twice a week to Liverpool's training ground, Melwood, and train under the watchful eye of youth coach John Bennison.

When you walked out on those pitches you felt 10ft tall even though, at that stage, I was still small and quite chubby.

It was the start of a dream I hoped would catapult me into the first team, playing in front of 45,000 fans and a throbbing Kop for, what I considered to be, the best team on the planet.

Training was against other young hopefuls who were either the same age or older than me. The likes of Paul Jewell, Mark Seagraves, Tony Kelly, Howard Gayle and Jimmy Comer - who is the masseur at Everton these days - used to go down to Melwood, each of them trying to catch the eye of the coaches.

Pulling on a red jersey and playing at Anfield was the ultimate goal, but all of us had a more immediate aim in mind back then.

Melwood was basic with none of the state-of-the-art facilities the Liverpool players enjoy now. There was no canteen or swimming pool, and no media room. It was more or less a small pavilion with a couple of changing rooms and a few side rooms.

The objective on a Tuesday was to do well enough in training so that, when you returned two days later on the Thursday, the coaches would remember you and select you to play on the staff team. Thursday was when first-team coaches Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans came down, forgetting the senior side and the likes of Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness for a bit, and joining in with the kids who one day hoped to emulate their heroes.

There wasn't a trophy to play for, but believe me those Thursday night games were the be all and end all back then. You were desperate to show Ronnie and Roy you could play the Liverpool way - pass and move, pass and move - and that you were one to keep an eye on, the player that caught the eye. You were basically on trial every week.

A bad session and you went home in bits. Do okay and you felt you'd made a name for yourself.

All day at St Margaret's School, Aigburth, I would think of nothing else but trying to impress the coaches, especially Ronnie. He was the driving force that made Liverpool so competitive, the man who would leave the first team's championship medals in a cardboard box for the likes of Kenny, Alan Hansen and Graeme to root out themselves, rather than stand to receive on ceremony. He was not one for creating a scene. The past was the past for Ronnie, all he was bothered about was doing things better the next time.

I hated not being on the staff side on a Thursday and, more often than not, I used to get picked for them. If it seems unfair that the staff picked the players who had stuck in their memory, then that's because I think it was designed so that the staff always won.

There were times when the staff team had fewer players in a bid to even things up, but they'd still run out winners.

Roy had a great left peg and would run around a bit, but Ronnie would get it and lay it off, keeping it simple. Pass and move, pass and move. Practising what he preached to the first team.

You'd get the ball and play it into Ronnie, and then look to support him. You were desperate to make your passes perfect, striving to make a constant impression, and you certainly didn't want him bawling at you in front of the other lads.

One Thursday I'd been picked for the staff team again and was just concentrating on doing what I did every other week. Keep the ball moving, try not to give the ball away, move into space, find your man, support the player on the ball.

"Here! I'm ******* here, not over there," barked Ronnie, sending a shudder right through me. Concentrate, I thought to myself. Come on.

It's just one mistake. Just don't make another. Head down, concentrate.

However, what I thought was one mistake soon, in Ronnie's eyes at least, became two, three, four, five, six.

The messages were straight to the point: "****! Don't run there, find some bloody space." "You've stopped. What have you ******* stopped for?"

I got an absolute pasting off him. Nothing I did was right. When I made a run, it was always into the wrong area of the pitch.

"What was that? What the **** are you doing?"

Time after time after time again. It was 45 minutes of absolute torture.

I have to say it wasn't personal abuse, all of it was football related, but that didn't make things any easier to bear. I wanted the earth to swallow me up.

I kept my gob shut. You never said anything back to Ronnie. Can you imagine a snotty-nosed schoolboy picking a fight with the first-team coach of Liverpool, someone who had played for the club, worked under Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and now Joe Fagan? Someone who, at that time, had been on the touchline in Rome '77, Wembley '78, Paris '81? The scenes of the club's greatest achievements. There was no answering back.

The session ended and I walked off dejected, thinking: 'That's it. That's me finished at Liverpool.' I didn't want to make eye contact with any of the other lads who had witnessed my humiliation. Head down, stare at the ground, get out of there. I'd not been handed an apprenticeship yet and this was clearly their way of breaking the news to me that I wouldn't be receiving one. They'd obviously watched me and I wasn't measuring up to what they wanted. I was distraught. This felt like the end.

You used to get your expenses on a Thursday from Tom Saunders, another wise old member of the Anfield think-tank that kept Liverpool out in front. It was £2.50, which would cover the bus fares and leave enough for a bag of chips on the way home. As I traipsed off I just wanted to get home. Get to the chippie and drown my sorrows.

Then I felt this arm on my shoulder. It was Roy. "What do you think?" he asked.

"I don't know what to think," I mumbled, shaking my head. "I've tried to do the same things that I have been doing for the past 12 months. I just don't understand what I've done wrong."

There was a silence for a few seconds, and then Roy came clean.

"Ronnie was testing you," he said.

"We were looking for someone to keep going, someone with a bit of the 'I'll show you' attitude. What we didn't want was someone who goes into their shell and can't perform when the pressure is on, when not everything is going right. That's not the type of player we want at Liverpool."

From feeling like my hopes had crashed and burned, things were looking up again. I started to understand what the previous tonguelashing had been about. Unwittingly, perhaps, I'd passed the test.

Ronnie, of course, said nothing to me. He was the bad cop and Roy the good cop. It had been difficult not to let my head drop as the abuse had rained down on me, but in those situations you have to drive yourself on. I'm sure the other lads had gone through something similar, but you don't notice so much when it is not directed at you.

It was every man for himself because everyone wanted the same thing - everyone knew what was at stake. What we didn't know was how many apprenticeships would be given out, if any at all. My age group was a particularly poor year, so the worry was that Liverpool might not take anyone on. It nagged away at you all the time.

What Ronnie did wouldn't be allowed today given how the country has become so politically correct, especially because his abuse had been directed at someone who was still a minor. But, while I hated it at the time, it didn't do me any harm in the long-run.

It seems strange to think of it now, but even before Ronnie and Liverpool got hold of me and set about trying to whip me into shape, I could have been pulling on a red shirt for a different team.

I was 14 coming up to 15, when I was asked by Manchester United to go for a week's trial there. Joe Armstrong, who is the United scout for the Liverpool area, approached my dad and said that I'd spend a week in halls of residence at Salford University, and go to the old Cliff training complex each day to play a game.

I'd started going to Liverpool games with my dad and, while I knew the rivalry with United was huge, I thought it was still worthwhile going. I hadn't signed for anyone at this point and, as much as I longed for Liverpool to show an interest in me, there was no guarantee, at that stage, that they ever would. If things didn't work out for me with Liverpool, maybe they would somewhere else.

The one thing I knew was that I wanted to be a professional footballer, so I had no real qualms about going to other teams on trial. Even to the enemy - United.

It's an outlook that stood me in good stead later in my career. You have to be pragmatic as a player and be prepared to go where you are wanted. Football is many things, but it is never predictable and only a few players see their careers pan out exactly as they envisaged they would. Or, indeed, how they wanted them to.

I'd been to trials far and wide. I went to Derby County for a day, Blackburn for a day. I played in a trial match for them in midfield and came home. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, but at the same time I didn't do anything wrong. Just okay. At United, I'd have more time to impress, a week of trials where I could show them properly what I could do. Or so I thought.

After half-an-hour, I wanted to come home. Of all the lads who had been invited along, United had made the mistake of not making sure they had picked two goalkeepers. The 20 outfield players were elected and when I wasn't one of them, I knew what was coming.

"Would you mind going in goal?" asked one of the coaches.

I agreed because I thought it was the right thing to do - you don't kick up a fuss when you're on trial at a club like United - but, from that moment, my mind was made up. I wouldn't be signing for United even if, during the rest of the week, I stood out like a beacon.

Maybe that is one of the reasons why United lagged behind Liverpool at that stage, embroiled in a constant game of catch up that Liverpool fans can now appreciate, with roles having been reversed.

If their approach to recruitment was such that they didn't even invite two goalkeepers to a week of trials, it was little wonder they were in the doldrums. It was amateurish. I was expecting everything there to be slick and professional.

It took the shine off the trial. I let a few in, of course, but what did they expect? Back then, I saw myself as a central midfielder, occasionally a striker for my Sunday League side, St Michael's, and certainly not a goalkeeper. I wanted to be dictating the tempo of the trial and doing well enough, so that if United were to offer me schoolboy terms word might get back to Liverpool as well, and jolt them into life.

To be denied that chance was depressing. Utterly depressing. I stuck out the week, and eventually go the chance to show what I could do in midfield, because I thought it was the right thing to do. How would it look if I stormed off after one day?

But the whole experience was an eye-opener for what was to come later in my career. A reality check, a reminder that life in football wasn't going to be about turning up and expecting to be given the chance to play in my favourite position. There were going to be obstacles flung down in front of me at every turn.

At the end of the week, United said they would be in touch. They never were, but there wouldn't have been any point. I'd never play for them. With each passing day, I was being swayed towards Liverpool.

Everton had never been in touch, but Liverpool's interest had been mentioned to my dad through the scout Jimmy Aspinall and then John Bennison. Even now, I can remember John coming round to my parents' house in Latrigg Road, Aigburth Vale, with what I suppose you could call a 'bung'.

It wasn't a bundle of cash, an envelope stuffed full of notes, or the promise of a house and a job for a relative. Instead, he presented me with a pair of shorts and one of the heavy duty, black woolly jumpers that the first team used to wear in training.

"We'd like you to come in and train with us twice a week," said John. "We think you've got something and that you'd be better coming to Liverpool than anywhere else."

Before he had even finished speaking I was thinking: 'Deal.'

In my head, the shorts belonged to Kenny Dalglish and the knitted jumper was one of Graeme Souness' but, to be honest, the gifts weren't necessary. Liverpool wanted me. That was enough. When do I begin?

Gary Ablett The Game of My Life is available from Monday, April 16 - click here to get your copy>>