Jamie Carragher: Phone calls from Cappielow – how Scottish football became my family's affair
On Father's Day, the Sky Sports pundit and Champions League winner writes exclusively for Nutmeg on how his son James's time in Inverness connected three generations of his family
Nutmeg FC is the place that brings the best football writers together with the best footballers… who write.
Today, on Father’s Day, Jamie Carragher writes about how football forms a bond between his own father, himself and his son, James, who played on loan at Inverness Caledonian Thistle during the second half of season 2023-24.
By Jamie Carragher
For a five-month period in early 2024, I got four phone calls every Saturday afternoon from various locations across Scotland. Always the same caller.
One about halfway through the first half. One at half-time. One midway through the second half. And then the full match analysis after the whistle.
Kirkcaldy, Arbroath, Dunfermline… my dad had travelled the world watching me play for Liverpool and England, but he’d never been to Stark’s Park, Gayfield or East End Park before. Let alone Inverness.
But here he was, going home and away with Inverness Caley Thistle to watch his grandson — my son, James — play in the Scottish Championship.
For a lot of us football fans, the game is a big part of our relationship with our dads. My first memories of football are watching the amateur teams my dad ran on Saturdays and Sundays, listening to the shouts on the pitch, standing next to the players at half-time, sitting in the pub with my dad and his mates as they talked football, learning the language.
Kenny Dalglish told a story in the introduction to my autobiography about an Under-10s game when I was playing against his son Paul’s team. We won a penalty late on and Kenny complained from the stands. My dad turned round and, as Kenny put it, told him to “keep his fucking mouth shut”.
Eventually, the sons become the dads. Nicola and I had our kids, Mia and James, when I was still playing. I watched James’s games from the touchlines like all the other fathers, but I also got to give him some experiences the other lads didn’t get — like taking him into training on a Sunday (but only if we had won on the Saturday) or bringing him to the Bernabéu to see his dad captain Liverpool against Real Madrid.
James was in the Liverpool academy for a time, then moved to Wigan before a knee injury slowed down his development, made worse by the pandemic and Athletic’s slide into administration. Now he was back to full fitness, James was desperate for game time.
At a crucial point in his career, one of the other dads from James’s old school team called me and it became a pivotal moment in his career.
I didn’t know Duncan Ferguson that well when we played against each other in Merseyside derbies, but his son and mine had played together when they were kids. Duncan had taken over at Inverness that September and when January arrived, he needed players. Someone had made him aware that James might be available on loan.
I spoke to James, and it took some time, but eventually everything was sorted out. My only concern as his dad was that he was going into a league — the Scottish Championship — with a lot of plastic pitches, and there’s been connections made between some of those surfaces and knee injuries.
The way the season had worked out, Inverness had already played most of their away games against the teams with artificial pitches, I think they only had a couple left, so we agreed that James would sit those out and he moved up to Inverness on his own.
My media schedule keeps me very busy, but every chance I could, I was up in Scotland to see him play. I went to Partick Thistle, to Morton and I saw him in Inverness. After everything he had been through, it was such a relief to see him get playing time. And for the games when I couldn’t get to Scotland, my dad gave me matchday coverage that was right up there with anything we produce at Sky.
In the first leg of the playoff final, on the plastic at Hamilton, James was on the bench as per our agreement. But after conceding two in the first half and with everything on the line, Duncan decided to put him on. Inverness got one back after the break and James hit the bar — but they lost at home and lost their place in the Championship as a result.
I got to know Inverness Caley Thistle when James was there: it’s like a family, from the tea ladies to the board. It was a painful way for it to end for James and the club, but the truth is, they gave James — and his dad (and his grandad) — more than anyone there knows.
An exclusive interview with Jamie Carragher will appear in the next issue of Nutmeg Magazine