I was born and bred near Liverpool but snubbed England after club legends inspired me

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So he's in there and I'm thinking, 'What's going on here?' The gaffer, Bruce Rioch, says to me, 'Jimmy Armfield wants you to play for England.' When I was in the pub working in 1990, the Italia World Cup finals was on."I'm a big Liverpool fan, you had Ronnie Whelan, Ray Houghton, Steve Staunton and John Aldridge playing for Ireland. I'm working in the pub watching all these games, and of course Liverpool's got a big Irish connection, so when the Ireland games were on, and they were doing really well with Romania and all that, the games were massive and the pub was full."I was thinking, 'This team is brilliant, they were having a great time, good footballers as well.' So I'd become a big Ireland fan, [I] wasn't interested in England.

Flip forward to my career and Jimmy Armfield says we'd like you to represent England, there's a B international and we'd like you and Alan Stubbs to play."So he leaves and I said to Bruce Rioch, 'I don't want to play for England, I want to play for Ireland.' So he's like, 'Why?' I went, 'They done really well in the World Cup, they've got loads of Liverpool players playing for them and I'm not really a***d about England.'"McAteer then began investigating whether he possessed Irish heritage. So he (Rioch) then said to me, 'Is there anyone in your family who's Irish?' I said, 'I'll have to go home and ask my mum and dad.'"So I went home and I said to my mum, 'England want me to play for them.' She said, 'That's nice.' I asked my dad if we had any Irish in the family.

The next game I go to, I had to go to court."There were four people in the courtroom. 'I pledge my allegiance to Ireland...' and that was it. I went from the court back to the hotel, I go in and my passport was on the bed.