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For my thirteenth birthday I went away to a soccer skills week at Calshot Activity Centre near Southampton. I wouldn’t say it was done on the cheap but my prize for being Player of the Week was two photographs, one of Kevin Keegan and one of Lawrie McMenemy—both unsigned. The sad thing is I still have them, and they are still not autographed. By now I was starting to realize I was pretty good at football and was playing regularly against much older opposition without looking out of place. That was partly because I had three talented older brothers and because I had the ability to cope with it.

The first sign of that came when I played in the final of the island’s Under-11 school tournament. I was just eight (and physically there’s a big difference between an eight-year old and a lad not quite 11) but I scored both goals to give my school, Mare de Carteret, a 2-0 win over Vale. It was my first ever medal and I remember thinking, ‘I’m bloody good at this!’ Even then I knew how to swear, although my vocabulary soon expanded as I learned to shout at referees.