I had a trial against Manchester United and Roy Keane, Gary Neville and company were ruthless… it was incredible.

Matthew Etherington has recalled his “brilliant” trial at Manchester United after his hat-trick.

The former winger began his career in the youth ranks of Peterborough United and quickly attracted the attention of Premier League clubs.

United He won the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup in 1999 and was offered a trial the following summer.

Sir Alex Ferguson's legendary team was made up of some of the best to ever grace the game, including Roy KeanePaul Scholes and Gary Neville.

A young Etherington quickly learned how good they were during his short spell and, appearing on talkSPORT's The Men's Room podcast, said: “It was an experience. I made my debut aged 15 at Peterborough and then there's a bit of attention, different clubs…

“There are rumors about Newcastle, Kevin Keegan was manager, Tottenham were interested and United were interested. “So Barry Fry (director of football), being the salesman, told us to get in the car and do a trial at Man United.

“I really thought we were going to train with the youth teams. We went up and met Sir Alex, the kitman accompanied us to the locker room. We went into the locker room, it was the first team locker room.

“I'm sitting next to Teddy (Sheringham) and Roy Keane. I sat next to Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, and we were thinking: 'What are we doing here?' I was 17, I think, I was 18, 19, and yeah, we trained with them all week.

“The first day, pits, the two youngest come in, we come in, yes, we keep the ball, the players are outside and you have to try to get it back. It was the year after they won the treble, Scholes, (David) Beckham, Keane , Nicky Butt, Gary Neville.

“We couldn't get the ball, we were there for 12 minutes! Three blocks out of four and we couldn't get the ball away from them and they didn't feel sorry for us either. They were literally ruthless, they just kept bang, bang, bang, bang, gang. It was incredible “A brilliant experience.”

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Having trained with some of the best in the business, Etherington could well have continued his career at United.

However, he explained that a stroke of bad luck prevented him from dazzling Ferguson: “We played the friendly on Thursday, we had our first league game with Peterborough on Saturday, so we were going to return on Friday.

“We played on Thursday against Boca Juniors. Sir Alex was in his office, with a floor-to-ceiling glass window looking out and watching the game, I was useless in the first half.

“I was very good, I played very well in the second half, but he left at half-time, but we came back and he said he liked us and that they were going to keep checking on us and then in January we went to Spurs.”

Etherington joined Tottenham in 2000 but only featured 49 times in all competitions during his three and a half seasons in north London.

He then joined West Ham, where he assisted Bobby Zamora in the winning goal against Preston North End in the Championship play-off final in the 2004/05 season.

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Thus, the Hammers returned to the Premier League and reached the FA Cup final in 2006, with Etherington starting in the match that saw them lose to Liverpool on penalties.

After 192 appearances for the Hammers, he completed his move to Stoke City and spent the rest of his career there, retiring at the end of 2014 due to a back injury.

Etherington now works as under-21 head coach at Colchester United, for whom he was briefly senior team coach.