Sheffield United’s Rhys Norrington-Davies: ‘I was preparing to go to uni’

It is almost 18 months since Rhys Norrington-Davies’s name was up in lights in the headmaster’s weekly newsletter at Royal Russell school in Croydon, celebrating his first call-up to the Wales senior squad. It was there that he achieved A-levels in maths, physics and geology, and was accepted into Southampton University to study civil engineering and architecture, at a time when being part of a Premier League promotion push felt rather unlikely. “Education was my main focus and the thought of getting back into football was a bonus,” he says. “I was preparing to go to uni. Growing up I used to like structures, building sandcastles on the beaches, so I always had an interest for it.”

But then Sheffield United came calling with a professional contract and the defender, released by Swansea at 16, returned to the game, via the Kinetic Academy programme, from which Joe Aribo, Josh Maja and Kwadwo Baah also progressed. Norrington-Davies made his United debut in August after productive loans in the Championship with Luton and then Stoke last season. That followed spells with Rochdale and Barrow, the latter in non-league. “I needed to go out and get regular first-team football. The loans were ideal because I was new to the game, raw and they enabled me to develop my game. At the rate Sheffield United have progressed in recent years, finding themselves in the Premier League, I had to raise my standards. I’d like to think I’ve improved massively over the last two or three years but there is still room for progression.”

Norrington-Davies spent the majority of his childhood in Aberystwyth, west Wales, attending a Welsh primary school, but was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and spent two and a half years in Nairobi because his father,