Brimmer brings Liverpool lessons to Melbourne Victory

“I was at Victory youth under Ange Postecoglou and was going to sign a senior contract… but before you knew it I was on a plane and over there. I stayed a few months and trained there, then flew back home, read my contract and soon I was back in Liverpool for the next three years.

“It went quickly and it was a memory I will treasure all my life. Liverpool looked after my family, my mum (Mary) and dad (Steve) and my youngest brother Sean came with me – he was at college there where he met his partner who is with him now in Australia.”

It was, as Brimmer says, a character building experience.

“It is a different breed of football. Everyone is competitive, there is massive passion. I played in the under 18s, and also in the under 23s, although I was much younger, and I learned a lot.

“I played in games with players like Mamadou Sakho (French international defender) and Joe Gomez and Trent Alexander Arnold, who are both my age and have both played for England already.

“I also played a few friendly games with the first team when a few players needed match fitness, so they arranged matches against lower league teams. To play alongside Stevie Gerrard, Phillipe Coutinho, that says it all really, very few players get the chance to do that.”

Things didn’t work out the way Brimmer hoped – a disagreement with a youth team coach when he was substituted in a game put him offside with authorities – but he did have a chance to reboot his European career with a move to German club Kaiserslautern, a former Bundesliga champion.

He preferred instead to return home to sign a deal with Perth Glory before moving to Victory this season.

“I did trial at Burnley. I played 90 minutes in a friendly for them, got an assist and scored a goal, I was thinking, that was good… but after the game the under-23s coach came up and said you are the best triallist we have had in years but you are too small.

“Kaiserslautern offered me a contract with the first team but being a different foreign country, not speaking the language was difficult. I was also concerned as to how I would manage on my own. I was still young, I was homesick, and Mum and Dad had told me they needed to get back home to start working.

“I said no to Kaiserslautern. Do I regret it today, possibly, but I needed to be back home and I feel as though I am showing my qualities in the A-League.”

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Should Brimmer score against City on Saturday night, expect the cameras to scan the stadium to look for his wife Brianna and his two daughters, Delilah, 3, and year-old Hazel.

On the pitch Brimmer will be cupping both hands to his ears and searching out his youngest daughter to let her know he has scored: she is deaf, and although she is now fitted with a Cochlear implant her best way of knowing if her dad has hit the target is to look for the ear cupping gesture.

“She is starting to slowly hear different noises. It’s a long journey for her, but hopefully in a couple of years time she will be able to hear everything.”