On the morning of December 17, Wolverhampton Wanderers’ under-21 players were called together on a pitch at their Compton Park training ground to receive devastating news. Ethan McLeod, their team-mate until last summer, had been involved in a car crash the previous evening and died at the tragically young age of 21.
Striker Fletcher Holman, one of McLeod’s best friends, had the news confirmed a few minutes later. “We were told on the training pitch,” Holman told The Athletic. “James Collins (under-21s coach) said there was sort of an uncertainty whether it was true, but I came back off the pitch and looked at my phone, and I’d got four or five missed calls from his godsister.
“I called her back straight away and she told me the news and I just broke down. I couldn’t believe it.
“I had been speaking to him the day before. It just shows how quickly things can change.”
Instinct kicked in and Holman drove immediately to the McLeod family home, where Ethan’s brother, Conor, a 19-year-old who is part of Wolves’ academy, was trying to process the shock along with their parents.
“The biggest thing that hit me was when Conor turned to me and said, ‘Just promise me that everything you do now is for him’, and we spoke about the dream that we always had together of becoming professional footballers.”
For Ethan, that dream began at the age of seven when he signed for Wolves’ academy. He stayed with the club for more than a decade, appearing regularly for the under-21s and featuring in the EFL Trophy, forging firm friendships along the way.
“I hate using the word ‘was’ because it’s so sad,” Wolves academy director Jonathan Hunter-Barrett told The Athletic. “But Ethan was a warm, loving, caring individual who literally had great relationships with all of his team-mates.
“In this job, you develop relationships with people. You’re working with people’s kids, and then you try to develop them to become footballers.
“But first you have to remember the human side of things, and the thing with Ethan was that no matter who he was with, he impacted them positively by the way he was as a person.”
Ethan McLeod playing for Wolves’ under-21 team in 2023 (Cameron Smith/WWFC)
Ethan had played a handful of games for Macclesfield, having joined the club in the summer and suffered an injury-affected pre-season. His loss has had a profound effect on the club.
He was driving home from their 2-1 National League North win at Bedford Town, in which he was an unused substitute, when he suffered the accident on the M1 motorway that claimed his life.
“The players have lost somebody that was so close to them, that they’d trained with day in and day out, and been around most days and had fun with,” Rob Smethurst, the Macclesfield owner, told The Athletic.
“It’s devastating, and the other tragic thing is that the team bus was in the resulting traffic jam, so the players could see the accident in the distance.
“They were stuck in it for five hours and they all went past and saw the car, but never thought it was one of them. One or two of them said, ‘Hasn’t Ethan got a Mercedes?’, and in the morning, a lot of the players were texting Ethan asking, ‘Are you OK?’.
“It was horrendous. For all the players out there, the message is to enjoy football. Football, at the end of the day, is just a game. Enjoy life. Love your families. This has made us realise how fragile life is. When you’re stressed, or you’re worried about the game or whatever, just enjoy it because life’s for living.”
At Wolves, the loss of Ethan has hit hard. Conor and his parents attended the club’s Premier League game at home to Brentford three days after his death and stood on the touchline as Molineux observed a minute’s silence.
Injuries meant several of the McLeod brothers’ friends were on the substitutes’ bench for the first team and there were moving hugs on the touchline at the end of the moment’s reflection. But there has been time, too, for smiles, as former colleagues reflect on his lengthy spell at the club.
“I watched him come through as a kid and he was always the outstanding player in each group,” said Wolves’ pathways manager, Steve Davis, who managed McLeod during his time in the club’s under-18s. “He was always playing up to a year above his age. Physically, he was stronger, quicker and better than most kids.
“And he was a lovely kid, always smiling. As coaches, we were excited about him as a talent. Then he spent that period with me and he found it tough, as they all do when they move up. It becomes even more competitive, and he had injury setbacks.
“He was just the loveliest kid, always smiling and grateful for the one-on-one time. He always wanted to know how he could improve and he cared about everybody else, probably more so than himself. He was humble and wanted feedback all the time. He was the sort of lad who could adapt to different environments and get on with everybody.”
At Wolves, Ethan’s reputation at Wolves was as a hard worker, a popular team-mate and a fine athlete blessed who could finish accurately with both feet.
And Hunter-Barrett smiled when recalling how those natural gifts had to be finessed in his early years as a schoolboy player.
“He had a good progression through the academy and regularly played up an age group, and yet there wasn’t a single player who was negative towards him. A lot of players will get opportunities to ‘play up’ and suffer a little bit of negativity from people around them — ‘why is he getting that opportunity?’ and that sort of thing.
“It was never like that with Ethan, which says a lot about what people thought of him. I first met him in the under-sevens or under-eights. Ethan always had a high level of athleticism — he’s always been bigger than everyone else, but I remember when we had to teach him the game, if that makes sense.
“In the under-nines, he scored an own goal from the halfway line because he didn’t know the power he had in his own legs, so he tried to play a pass back to his goalkeeper and kicked it so hard it went over the goalkeeper.”
Ethan worked closely with Sean Miller, the academy’s former strength and conditioning coach, on finetuning his athleticism for football, and with the former England striker Darius Vassell, who coached in the academy, on the tactical and technical side of his game.
In his final years at Wolves, injuries hampered Ethan’s progress. He suffered a serious hamstring issue while training with the first team and required surgery.
Eventually, after a loan at non-League Alvechurch, he was released by Wolves and had to set about building his career outside of the only football environment he had known.
It began with Rushall Olympic, a progressive non-League side near Walsall, where McLeod spent just a few weeks last season, but where he etched his name into ‘Pics’ history by scoring the winning penalty in a shootout against Peterborough Sports to take the club into the first round of the FA Cup for the first time.
“He was with us for a really short time and he’d been at Wolves since he was seven, so was a bit battered and bruised after being released,” said Nick Allen, Rushall’s vice-chairman.
“He was a young man just trying to get his head around things, but he was a quiet, unassuming sort of lad who played the game with a smile on his face.
“We looked after him and he helped us, and it turned out to be a really historic time for our club, reaching the first round, something we’d always wanted to achieve.
“So Ethan is in the Rushall Olympic history books. That moment is iconic for us. It was an ambition achieved and Ethan was pivotal. It was a moment where clarity was needed, along with star quality and calmness.
“Ethan provided all of that. After he left us, he played a few games for Stourbridge and we were chuffed when we heard he’d got his move to Macclesfield because it showed him and us that he had a future in the game, whether it was in the professional ranks or at a really good level in non-League.”
Ethan’s former Macclesfield team-mates host Premier League Crystal Palace in the third round of the FA Cup tomorrow.
Ordinarily, it would be a joyous occasion for the ‘phoenix club’ that was founded five years ago following the financial demise of its predecessor, Macclesfield Town.
But the tragic events of the past few weeks continue to cast a shadow over The Moss Rose.
“He was brilliant,” said Smethurst. “You could see how dedicated he was to playing football each week and how good he was on the field, but also he was just one of those really likeable lads.
“He was funny, he was warm, he had a really nice sense of humour, he was just a really good lad, so it’s been horrendous.
“I got a phone call from the police at about 8:30 in the morning with the tragic news, and I had to break it to the manager, and then the manager and myself made all the calls to the players individually, which was absolutely heartbreaking.
“Everybody deals with it differently, but most of them couldn’t even speak, they were completely broken.
“We all decided to meet at the club, we all sat in a room, and we advised them if they wanted any counselling or anything that they required, to help them through this, then it would be there for them. We’ve stayed very, very close. But we’ve got players who are in mourning and you can see it in their performances. They’ve lost not only a team-mate, but a friend.
“His picture is up in the changing room, we have retired his shirt — the number 20 will never be used again at Macclesfield — and that’s up in the dressing room, so hopefully the players can take some sort of inspiration from it. We’re doing what we can to support his parents and his family with anything they need, and we’ll carry on paying his contract, but it’s such a difficult one.
“Yes, you’d like to think in the changing rooms he’s the 12th man and it’s an inspiration because they’re still lucky enough to play football and Ethan will never have that, but if I’m honest, I think it’s had the opposite effect and actually, when you get down it it, it is exhausting for them and they are mentally exhausted.”
For Holman, though, the memories of his friend, raw at present but recounted with a smile, are something he hopes to use as inspiration for the remainder of his life.
Since the 21-year-old joined Wolves from Eastbourne Borough two years ago, the pair had dreamed big together. Now Holman plans to continue doing so in honour of his friend.
Wolves striker Fletcher Holman will take inspiration from his friendship with McLeod (Ben Roberts Photo/Getty Images)
“He was the first person who ever approached me and spoke to me when I was moving to Wolves,” Holman said. “He was the welcoming sort of lad and his family were top with me and almost took me in as a third kid. He was a great footballer who showed what his personality is like off the pitch and on it, and left it all out there.
“We used to talk about becoming players and being able to play in the league and I now know that I’ve got to go on and do exactly what we discussed in memory of him.
“It’s all still very fresh, but everything I do now is purely for him.”