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Even now, Andy Waterworth has little trouble recalling when he was first made aware of Kieran Morrison's outstanding talent.

It had the hallmarks of a typical afternoon for the 38-year-old, who sought to sift through a heap of unread correspondences as the Irish Football Association's Head of Elite Player Development. Only this time, one email in particular caught his attention.

"Our scout at the time Conor Marlin, who now works for FIFA, had sent me a couple of reports on Kieran," recalls Waterworth. "Basically that he was flying. He went from Manchester United to Liverpool and he was really, really well thought of."

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Usually, when an emerging talent is eligible for Northern Ireland and has been identified, Waterworth and his team will devise a plan on how best to follow their progress before potentially inviting them to a camp. Such a lengthy process wasn't needed for Morrison though, who after swapping Old Trafford for Anfield at under-14s level, was hitting all the right notes during his early days on Merseyside.

That was confirmed after representatives of Northern Ireland headed to Liverpool's Kirkby Academy in October 2021 for further assessments of the midfielder in an under-15s fixture against Norwich City. In fact, so impressive was his performance against the Canaries that the feedback to Waterworth was unprecedented.

"Normally I’d go over to try and watch a game but his [scouting] report was so good that we decided to just invite him to an under-15s camp in Belfast," says Waterworth, a former forward who enjoyed an 18-year career