Rhain Davis: The nine-year-old YouTube sensation who joined Manchester United in 2007 |

In the summer of 2007, a video was uploaded to YouTube titled ‘Rhain Davis the Whiz Kids joins Manchester United’.

The accompanying description goes into more detail: “THE world’s most famous soccer club — Manchester United —has offered nine-year-old Brisbane whiz kid Rhain Davis a shot at stardom.”

Davis’ montage, which includes him performing Cruyff turns, weaving his way past opposing players and scoring goals, has been viewed more than five million times.

In a world in which Facebook and Twitter were still relatively new social media platforms, the concept of going viral was in its infancy — but that is exactly what happened to Davis.

“Being a nine-year-old, it all happened so fast and you don’t really understand the magnitude of things,” Davis, now 25, tells The Athletic. “The games were recorded in Australia, which is actually far more advanced than what was going on in England at the time.

“(But) We never uploaded the video! I don’t know if it got leaked in Australia and then news outlets got hold of it and put it online. We didn’t see the gain of the whole YouTube saga.

“My parents did a really good job of shielding me from it and I never really tuned in. We never really sat down and thought about what this is becoming.”

Born in Brisbane, Australia, Davis and his family moved to the United Kingdom when his youngest brother, Reeve, was born. They returned to Brisbane and settled down in Raby Bay when Reeve was still young.

By his own admission, football was not the most popular sport in Australia and sits behind rugby, cricket and Australian rules football in the pecking order.

However, Davis’ father, Mark, played to a respectable standard and coached the local team.

“Back then (in Australia), football wasn’t as big, but ESPN would be the first thing I put on in the morning,” Davis explains. “I would put it on Saturday morning because we would catch the back end of La Liga games. Whenever I could, I’d have the football on or watch it on YouTube. Joga Bonito was a big influence on me.

“I would be playing football at lunchtime, after school and whenever I could. I would train on Tuesday and Thursday and then on a Saturday morning we would have a game.

“My dad was heavily invested and trained himself in Cruyff’s school of football and that is where we predominantly learned everything from.”

Davis admits to having a soft spot for Liverpool because of Harry Kewell, arguably Australia’s most famous footballer, and watched them more than any other side growing up. His father also happens to be a Liverpool fan.

Kewell celebrates for Liverpool (Photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)

Looking back at his early development, Davis recalls playing football with Emerson, his brother who is two years older than him, as a reason why he was ahead of other players his age.

The YouTube montage highlights a clear gulf in quality between the then nine-year-old and his opponents, but he says he gave that little thought — possibly not even realising his talent was on a different level.

With plans in the pipeline of a family return to England, a DVD of Davis playing football was sent to various clubs by his grandad, who was based in the UK, and it was at this moment that everything changed for the nine-year-old.

“United were the first ones to get back to me,” he said. “My dad said we’d heard back from United and asked whether I wanted to go and train there.

“Deep down, I didn’t think anything would come of it. It was more about me and my dad taking on the world and I saw it as a nice time to travel with him.”

“I had a couple of training sessions and that is when they said they wanted to sign me. Certainly, for my dad, that is when it got a lot more serious.”

On his first day at Carrington, Davis was given a tour by Derek Langley, then head of academy recruitment, and bumped into Cristiano Ronaldo.

“He was on one of the computers in the gym and we had a chat with him,” Davis tells The Athletic. “It was a year or two before he turned into the Ronaldo we all know, but he was a lovely guy.”

After his tour of Carrington, Davis laced up his boots and prepared for his first training session.

“It was with the year above because my year were on camp as it was the end of the season,” he recalls. “I wouldn’t have said there was a massive gulf, but there was a difference in quality.

“Carrington 15 years ago was state of the art, so going from a team in Australia with a clubhouse and a couple of football pitches to Man United’s base was a big step up.

“But when you are young, you are so naive and take everything in your stride. I never really sat back and thought, ‘Wow, look what is going on’. I just wanted to play football.”

His new crop of team-mates, which included Marcus Rashford and Axel Tuanzebe, overlooked his YouTube fame and “never labelled” him “the YouTube kid” or “the kid from YouTube”. Instead, he was known as “Rhain from Australia” or “the Australian kid”.

Davis singled out Rashford when asked who impressed him most in his age group.

“He was the standout and always has been,” he said. “He was a very talented footballer and very dedicated. It couldn’t have happened to a better kid. He completely dedicated himself to football.”

Despite the fanfare around his United arrival, which included him being compared to Wayne Rooney, Davis says his parents were able to shield him from the noise.

“It is a big step moving schools in the same country, so having to do that in conjunction with the fact that I was settling into what I wanted to do in my career, it is crazy to think about,” he explains.

“My parents took the stress away from me and always told me it was a journey and that I should enjoy it. There wasn’t ever any pressure.”

Rhain Davis (front row, fourth right) with Marcus Rashford sat to his right (Photo: Rhain Davis)

Davis joined United’s academy a year before they won the Champions League and immediately felt part of a culture that was geared towards winning.

He described his age group as a “mini army” and noted how Tony Whelan, head of the academy, set the standards.

“From a theoretical point of view, culture is the hardest thing to get and the easiest thing to lose,” Davis says. “Everything we did was the right way.

“You had to clean your boots and you would be told off if they weren’t clean. We all wore the same. We very rarely got beat. It wasn’t always because we were good, but because we did everything right.

“It was so clean-cut. Everyone was polite, and manners were a massive thing. It just shows the quality of player and person that Manchester United breed. It exceeds the boundaries of football. They are making good people because of the culture.”

Sir Alex Ferguson’s influence loomed large while Davis was playing for United’s academy and the 25-year-old remembers the speeches he would deliver whenever he stood in front of the crop of budding footballers.

“There were a couple of evenings where he would hold a presentation for the academy and talk to us about what he expects and the boundaries are expected to live by outside of football,” Davis says.

“He was big on education. He actually put a person called Dave Bushell in charge of the education side of things in the academy. Dave Bushell was always ringing the schools and checking in on us to make sure we were behaving and doing our homework.

“It goes back to the culture. Everything was managed and done the right way. They not only wanted to breed good footballers, but polite, well-mannered and good kids.”

“He (Ferguson) was an amazing person to meet and it is one of those things where you will always remember meeting him.

“It isn’t the respect he demands or deserves, but the respect he gives. He is a very respectful man, but don’t get that twisted. He was ruthless and, again, that is the culture. We were relentless and ruthless.”

Davis continued to progress through the academy, but then his development was halted after he broke his leg.

He was 14 years old when he sustained the injury, which was two years away from when scholarships were going to be awarded and there is no doubt it decreased his chances of landing one.

“I was dicking around with some mates,” Davis says. “It was a turning point. It was a year before decisions were made, but I am not going to hold that and say that is the reason I didn’t get a contract.

“It was all up in the air and what is it to say I would get one? I probably wasn’t going to. But it didn’t help the process and it didn’t help me going on to look elsewhere.

“I never really got back to full fitness at my time at Manchester United. But no way am I going to say that was the reason it didn’t work out because it wasn’t. You have a feeling who will get one and who wouldn’t, and I don’t know where I stood.”

Davis remembers staying optimistic throughout his recovery and looked to get it out of the way as soon as possible so he could get back playing again.

Davis (front row, third right) holds the 2008 Champions League trophy

But due to his age and concerns around child development and rushing him back, it meant he had to sit out for longer.

When he did return to training and it was time for the players’ end-of-season reviews, Davis was delivered the news that United were not going to be offering him a scholarship.

“They were really good about it,” he recalls. “You know that conversation is coming when you are in that age group. They get into contact with clubs for you and they ease the pain by trying to transition you somewhere else.

“If you were to snapshot my emotion then, it feels like it’s the end of your world. You have dedicated everything to that place and it is no longer going to be part of your routine. It is a tough thing to get over, and some kids don’t.

“Luckily for me, I was in an environment where I’ve got amazing people around me who said, ‘Let’s go and tackle the next adventure’. That isn’t the case for a lot of kids.

“It is hard-hitting and it makes you grow up quickly. Football makes you grow up; it teaches you life lessons and you learn how to have hard conversations at 15 years old. It is the best teacher of life, I think.”

Davis says he received interest from other clubs following his release, but said he wanted to concentrate on his education. This meant for the first time since moving from Brisbane to Cheshire, football was going to take a backseat.

“I was lucky that my parents are educated and they understand the harsh realities of life and that it can be a numbers game,” he says. “It is one per cent of kids who go to academies and then it is one per cent of the one per cent who end up getting contracts. One per cent of the kids are still playing after three years.

“The figures are quite harrowing, and my parents were clued up on that early doors. That is why I am one of the lucky ones, because when I didn’t get a break in football, I did my GCSEs, A-Levels and went to university and now I’m doing accountancy stuff.

“I owe it to my parents for spreading my eggs and not just lumping it all down the football path. They knew football was everything to me and back then I didn’t care about school, but they just opened my eyes and wanted me to be sensible.”

While studying economics and business at the University of Sheffield, Davis was given a way back into professional football and was willing to give up his education and return to Australia to make it happen.

This experience, he says, left him feeling worse than when he was released by Manchester United.

Mike Phelan (second left) with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (left) (Photo: Martin Rickett – Pool/Getty Images)

“Rene Meulensteen is a family friend and I knew his youngest from school,” Davis explains. “In the summer of 2018, Rene gave me a call and said he’d joined forces with Graham Arnold at the Socceroos and asked if I wanted to come out and train with the Olympic team ahead of Tokyo.

“It went great and I had also been training with the Central Coast Mariners. Mike Phelan was the sporting director, so Rene knew him and had a word. I really enjoyed my six weeks there.

“Mike Mulvey (the manager) offered me a deal and I was going to sign it after I came home for Christmas. I was going to come home and sort out my affairs because I was at uni. I was going to tell them that I was leaving. I was going to move back to Australia.

“They got beat 8-2 by Wellington Phoenix and Mike Mulvey got the sack and Mike Phelan had departed to join forces with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United.

“Within a weekend, I’d lost all point of contact with this club and that was probably the hardest thing to get over. That was probably the biggest let-down to overcome.

“I was 21 years old and mature enough to understand that I was still young, but there were 16-year-old kids breaking into first teams and putting their stamp on things.

“That weekend was particularly difficult to come to terms with because all of a sudden I went from signing a deal in the A-League to having no contact with the club.”

After the Australian setback, Davis completed his degree and is now carving out a successful career in finance.

After playing for Altrincham, Davis’ passion for football started to wane but he rediscovered his love for the game when he signed for West Didsbury & Chorlton, a semi-professional club near Manchester, who he helped gain promotion last season.

Davis in action for West Didsbury & Chorlton (Photo: Simon Cook)

“Things didn’t turn out how I wished for at United, but I wouldn’t change it for the world,” he says without a hint of doubt.

And what about the YouTube video?

“People still make tongue-in-cheek comments in passing, but nothing like they used to! One kid used to call me wonderkid… it is all fun and games.”

(Design: Sam Richardson)

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Rhain Davis: The nine-year-old YouTube sensation who joined Manchester United in 2007

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