His column in The Times:
Preparing for my 500th game for Manchester United, against Birmingham City on Sunday, I have been asked by a few people to look back over my years at Old Trafford. There are times when I could have played better, games when I might have made fewer mistakes, but one thing I would like to say for myself is that, from the ages of 16 to 31, I have given everything.
Your best is the least you should give, but we have all seen players who have fallen short because they have not applied themselves. Players with much more talent than me.
Five hundred games is a bit of a milestone, but you will find a few people around United — influential ones — who were not sure I would make 50. I spent most of my teenage years waiting for rejection. I still remember my shock at being one of the 16 picked out of 200 kids in the under-11s. That letter through the post was the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen.
I still wonder why I was invited back every year and it can only have been attitude. If training started at 5pm, I would be there at 4.15, passing against a wall. I knew I had to when I saw the skills of local lads like Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt at 13. Then the out-of-town kids joined us, like David Beckham, Keith Gillespie and Robbie Savage. I was a central midfield player and you think: "I'm not as good as this lot, nowhere near."
We played a game against the national school, the Lilleshall under-16s, and Ryan Giggs scored with a bicycle kick from 20 yards. Great for him, frightening for me.
People assume that a career in football falls into your lap, that you were always going to play for Manchester United. They do not see the challenges that you have to overcome and they forget the dozens of players who never quite make it.
If you are not the most talented player in the world, you have to sprint to keep up. You have to make sacrifices. When I left school at 16, I made the conscious decision that I would cut myself off from all of my mates. It sounds brutal, and it was selfish, but I knew that they would be doing all sorts of teenage things that I couldn't get involved with, even if it was just having a few drinks out in Bury.
I will always remember my Dad telling me: "You've got two years to give it a real go. Never look back and wish you had done more." Me and a United apprentice, John Sharples, would go running every afternoon. Five, ten miles round the streets.
I had the great fortune to be swept along by one of the best youth teams you will ever see, but the tests kept coming. I switched from midfield to centre back, but we had United's best-ever partnership in Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister. Right back was my only opening, but even when Paul Parker got injured and I was thrust into the first team, I'm not sure the manager was convinced.
He was not the only one. Peter Schmeichel used to hammer me. We would be doing crossing practice and he would just pluck my balls out of the air as if to say: "You're not good enough." It was only three or four years later that he came up to me on a team day out and said: "You've proved me wrong." That is the education that people don't see.
I still remember Steve Bruce ripping me to shreds at Elland Road, Mark Hughes charging at me just because I hadn't played the ball into the channel, Eric Cantona giving me the stare, Keaney and Incey snarling. And that was before you had to face the manager. It was a hard school, but the best education imaginable. Those players had already won medals and they were thinking: "Is this bunch of kids going to keep me in championships?" Now I am one of the demanding old pros and I sometimes wonder where the 15 years have gone. It sounds a cliché, but I have been living a childhood dream. The 500 appearances is great, but the real miracle is that I shared a dressing-room with six of my best mates, and my brother for more than ten years.