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To represent your country is an achievement to be proud of.

To do so at the age of 17 is pretty remarkable.

But what happens when it all comes too soon? What happens if you're simply not ready to deal with it all?

Ryan Green is one such case.

Casual football fans may not recognise the name but Green was once Wales' youngest footballer. He broke Ryan Giggs' record back in June, 1998, as he made his senior debut against Malta under Bobby Gould.

(Image: Rob Browne)

He would play just one more game for Wales.

While Giggs would go on to become one of Europe's most decorated footballers, the boy who took his record went on a very different career trajectory.

This is his story.

Drinking, fighting and time to leave the city

I meet Green in the plush surroundings of David Lloyd's Gym in Cardiff.

He appears to know everyone and everyone knows him - a knock-on effect of spending five days a week in the gym.

He wasn't always so committed to football and fitness. He readily admits it took a while for the penny to drop.

It's only now he is semi-professional and dabbling in landscape gardening and property development that he realises you're a long time retired.

He might never have even got this far had things gone a little bit different when he was younger.

He grew up in Fairwater in Cardiff - an area he admits was "a little bit rough." It's certainly a far cry from the pristine tennis courts and fitness centre he's sat next to right now.

But it was more Green's actions than his surroundings that threatened to derail his career long before it had begun.

(Image: Birmingham Post and Mail)

"I was getting in a little bit of trouble in school," explains the likable Green, now 37.

"It was lads stuff when you're younger - fighting and drinking every now and then.

"I did like a drink like most young lads do. I even got in trouble with the police for fighting."

Fearing Green was going to throw his talent and life away, Green's mother stepped in to make a difficult demand of her son.

"My mum made me leave for Wolverhampton when I was 15 or 16. That kept me out of trouble and here I am now.

"It was good to leave at that time. My mum said 'move to Wolverhampton and sort your head out', which I definitely did.

"I was a bit wild through my career but nothing fighting wise like before.

"I keep my nose clean now."

Moving to Wolverhampton was a shock to the system for Green. He was homesick for the first year, coming home every weekend after football.

If moving to the Black Country was a shock, there was a far bigger one right around the corner.

Being Bobby Gould's 'stunt'

At the age of 17 and without a minute of senior football to his name, Green was called up by Wales manager Bobby Gould for their friendlies with Malta and Tunisia.

Understandably, it was quite hard for Green to fathom.

"I'd gone from school getting kicked out at 15 and then a year and a half later I'm playing for Wales with the legends like Gary Speed and Dean Saunders," he says.

It almost feels like he still can't believe it to this day. That's not to say the call-up wasn't necessarily deserved.

Although not everyone feels that way.

Green wasn't just making his debut for Wales, he was breaking a record.

At 17 years and 225 days, he was surpassing Ryan Giggs to become Wales' youngest cap - before even playing a senior game for his club.

An unbelievable achievement but the man he was taking the record from seemed less than thrilled - labeling it a "typical Gould stunt".

In his book years later, Giggs wrote: "Bobby seemed to do a lot of things just for effect. It was typical of him (to pick Green.)

"Ryan, like me, came from Cardiff, but we didn't have much else in common.

"Last I heard, he was playing non-league football."

(Image: Rob Browne)

I wasn't sure how Green would react when I put those quotes to him. Few people would like to hear one of their greatest achievements called a 'stunt' after all.

I'd prepared for pretty much every answer and yet the one he chose still took me by surprise.

"The comments in his book? Well, it's true - I didn't make it as a Premier League player.

"He says it was a Bobby Gould stunt. You've got to agree with him really.

"He's an absolute legend.

"Did Bobby Gould do it as a stunt? I don't know, I was playing really well at the time with Wales Under-21s and Wolves reserves and I think to be honest I deserved a call-up. My form at the time was really good.

"I wasn't the next Ryan Giggs - I was never that good.

"Was I good enough for The Premier League? Possibly if I had my head right when I was younger.

"My mind was on partying as much as it was football so that's a massive downside to most of my career.

"That's down to myself but I've had a fantastic career and I've enjoyed every minute of it."

The theme of too much partying is a recurring one - something that affected his later career more than once.

So it's perhaps ironic - or simply necessary - that his greatest moment in football was notable for the fact he was too young to go out.

"All the lads went clubbing after the Malta game and I wasn't allowed out. I was 17 at the time and there was loads of press around so I couldn't really do much to be honest.

"I was stuck in the hotel. All the lads were out partying and I had to go to bed.

"It was only right but I wasn't too pleased at the time because I loved partying."

Surrounded by legends in a pub team

Ask anyone who had played in the 1990s for Wales and they'll likely tell you stories about Bobby Gould. Far-fetched stories that capture the madness of a unique era.

"He was a bit of a character but I didn't know much about professional managers back then so I just thought they were all like that.

"I was a bit young then and a bit nervous and it wouldn't have registered if he'd done something silly or mad."

Not everyone was as oblivious to the madness of the times as the young Green though.

"I remember a couple of arguments with Gary Speed and himself," he continues.

"Gary Speed would say he's not doing things properly.

"It was after Tunisia. We lost 4-0 and Speed told him we were run like a pub team.

"Looking back we could have been a bit more professional."

Suddenly another story springs to his mind. Seemingly even those who think they have no interesting stories from the Gould era are blessed with one or two.

"I remember his assistant was doing the team talk and he had 12 players on the board starting which is obviously ridiculous.

"He didn't even realize until the lads pointed out. He went really red."

Despite the madness, Green has nothing but respect for Gould.

"I owe a lot to Bobby Gould. He was really nice to me and I thought he was ok."

Why not?

Gould had plucked this teenager who was rough around the edges and thrown him into a dream environment where he was surrounded by legends.

Perhaps that was the problem.

Adversity causes some men to break. It causes others to break records.

The adversity Green had been up against earlier in his life had little to do with his call-up.

Even if he did deserve his cap, it was the whim of Gould, not adversity, that helped Green break Giggs' record.

Maybe that's why he never kicked on as he'd have hoped to.

The games themselves were a mixed bag. A 3-0 win over Malta was a comfortable debut for Green.

A 4-0 defeat to Tunisia just a few days later saw him give away a controversial penalty. "Would it be given now? I don't think so," reflects Green.

"I don't think VAR would allow it!"

Little did he know at the time that would be the last time he played for Wales.

The downfall

After making his debut, things should have only got better for Green. They didn't.

His season was cut short by a serious ligament injury. He returned later that year, only to suffer the same injury again.

A change in manager at Wolves saw him make what he refers to as the first of his regrets - handing in a transfer request.

"For a young lad to put a transfer request in, it could come across a little bit big time," he admits.

"If I could do it again, I'd knuckle down and work harder to get my place back in the team."

(Image: Rob Browne)

But hindsight is an easy thing. He felt he had little choice but to move if he ever wanted to pull on the red shirt again.

He ended up on loan at Torquay.

"I don't think Wales are going to pick someone playing in League Two."

He was right. They didn't. However, things weren't done there. He eventually did leave Wolves for Millwall - only to exit there a season later.

He almost joined Bradford City but ended up at hometown club Cardiff City on a monthly contract.

On paper it seemed perfect, the Bluebirds were in League One and pushing for promotion. Green was confident he could make a difference at this level.

He would play just one game. An Auto Windscreens Shield match against Exeter.

"All my family supported Cardiff City so I'd have loved to done well there but it wasn't to be."

(Image: Rob Browne)

Onto the next club then. Sheffield Wednesday.

It was another one doomed to fail.

"There was a curfew on us because we were bottom of the league and the manager didn't want us to go out in Sheffield.

"Me and Leon Knight decided to go out in Sheffield."

That was the end of his time there. Contract ripped up, he was dismissed. Clubbing had let him down again.

Finding a home

Green's career was in danger of completely slipping away from him at this point, so where could he go next?

Little did he realise that his next choice would be the place that he would come to call his footballing home.

He joined Hereford United - dropping from the Championship to the Conference.

The incident at Sheffield Wednesday had made something click in him. The move to Hereford saw him settle down.

Maybe it was the drop to the Conference, the cut in pay or the lack of nightlife in Hereford - Green admits the latter helped - but his time at the Bulls would see him redefine his career and himself.

Not that Football League clubs were noticing.

"Even though I played well, the managers were looking and saying I don't want to take him.

"Maybe they thought 'he goes out all the time and could be a bad influence on the young lads of the club'.

"I was playing really well. I was at least Championship standard but no one wanted to take me from the Football League."

His first spell ended in him scoring the goal in the play-off final to get Hereford back to the Football League. He looks back on it as one of his favourite moments in football.

(Image: Getty Images)

Yet just as he had found his home, he was leaving.

Sentimentality means little in the lower leagues and cash-strapped Hereford could only offer him a £50 increase. He moved to Bristol Rovers for another shot at the Football League.

Bad luck followed him in the much the same way his reputation did.

An Achilles injury was followed by a broken jaw - the result of a blind punch on a night out. Green had done nothing wrong but, he admits, "it didn't look good for the club."

Three more years at Hereford followed. Having spent his first spell trying to get Hereford into the Football League, he had spent the second trying to stop them slipping out of it.

It was all in vain. He didn't even receive a phone call to tell him there was no deal on the table.

Falling out of love

Green was now lost.

A move to Cyprus fell through after he heard about how clubs there tend to withhold payment when things go wrong.

And so Green made what he described as the final big mistake of his career. Signing for Port Talbot.

Fifteen years after Gary Speed was berating Bobby Gould for how the team was being run, Green found himself back in a "pub team" environment.

"I was ready to retire."

He didn't, however. A move to Merthyr reinvigorated his career at the age of 34. He was living his life right, "doing everything right in football which I should've done when I was younger - eating, training everything."

After falling back in love with football, he returned to the place where he was loved.

(Image: Rob Browne)

Hereford United had gone bust in late 2014. The pheonix club Hereford FC was founded almost immediately.

Green came home and never looked back. In his first season there, they reached Wembley - something the old club never managed in 90 years.

It was a day that reaffirmed not just Green's decision to return to Edgar Street, but his career as a whole.

The sight of 20,000 fans chanting his name as he warmed up at Wembley is validation enough for his career - it makes him so much more than just a 'non-league footballer' who shared a hometown and a record with Ryan Giggs.

"Seeing that many Hereford fans at Wembley brought a tear to my eye - I'm not even sure there are 20,000 people in Hereford."

Fans of the club raised over £1,000 last season just so Green could get an injection for his chronic tendonitis in his Achilles.

"I owe a lot to them. We respect each other."

The two Ryans

As he reaches the end of his career, it is clear he is doing everything right. That wasn't always the case.

In a way, his story will always be intertwined with Ryan Giggs.

There are a number of similarities - more than Giggs presumed years ago.

"Giggs was a winger who moved to central midfield.

"I'm similar. I've gone from full back, which was a lot of running, to centre-half - which is reading the game more.

"We're from the same areas. He's from Ely, I'm from Fairwater - it's very close. His grandparents are from Fairwater.

"We've both represented our country. He played until he was 40 and I want to do the same.

"He's a multimillionaire. I'm not.

"Our careers will always be linked with me breaking his record but I doubt if he'll remember me as much as I remember him. He's an absolute legend and a fantastic footballer."

There are certainly plenty of parallels, but Green's path has been a unique one.

Just as we're about to leave, I ask him if he'd swap all he's achieved for one more Wales cap.

"No," is his simple answer and you can understand why.

He's experienced the adversity and adulation a football career can offer. Next up for him is contentment.