Thomas, of Pasture Road, Moreton, a first year apprentice at the K.W.K. engineering factory, at Park Street, Birkenhead, was told along with other apprentices by the managing director, Mr William Kaminski, to get his hair cut properly.
As a first year apprentice he played for the youth and reserve teams and due to his great goalscoring record, which led him to be named on the bench for two first team matches in the League Cup, they decided to keep him on for a third year.
Starting pay for a first year apprentice is usually not too much more than minimum wage.
Reunited for just one day last summer, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Phil and Gary Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes clearly revelled in recalling their seven-year ascent through the United ranks, from put-upon first year apprentices to treble-winning kings of Europe.
He learned that he would not receive a professional contract at Burnley in February, which was partly because both Chris McCann and Kyle Lafferty had both already received professional contracts and they were only second year apprentices.
Elaine Stanley, 28, is a third-year apprentice at the Brompton and part of a different group of women going into the building trades: those who have college degrees or are changing careers.
Proposition 39 retrofit projects will create an estimated 95 entry-level, first-year apprentice jobs annually in the construction trades.
My daughter, a college graduate, is thriving as a fourth-year apprentice carpenter, building New York City's water filtration plant in the Bronx.
But Christopher Marron, a 39-year-old first-year apprentice ironworker who once worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (he was there the morning of 9/11), seems to speak plainly for them all: "I look forward to getting here.
"They're just happy that you can pull your weight," said Eva Paz, 36, a second-year apprentice in the carpenters' union, who has a "No Cry Baby" sticker on her hard hat.
