Читать книгу Taking le Tiss онлайн

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Chris thought I wasn’t physically developed enough to play 90 minutes. Looking back, I see he was trying to protect me a bit BUT in my opinion, and I have told him this, I think he went too far. He should have given me more starts. I proved I could last a full match when I scored my first senior hat trick. It came in the snow against Leicester in the first week of March. I put us 1-0 up at half-time when Mark Wright knocked the ball down in the box and I crashed it into the roof of the net with my left foot. I remember Chris Nicholl had to virtually force Mark Wright back onto the pitch after the interval—he was refusing to go because it was so cold. I’ve never seen anything like it. His ears had turned blue and he was determined to stay in the warmth of the dressing room. Danny Wallace set me up for my second, a tap-in at the far post from his cross from the left. And then, with eight minutes left, came the pièce de resistance. I picked the ball up just inside the Leicester half and set off on a mazy run. The pitch was heavy and sodden and the snow was swirling around and I got a bit lucky when Russell Osman came in to tackle me and the ball fell back into my path. The better you are, the luckier you get. My first shot was blocked by the goalkeeper Ian Andrews but it came back to me and I rammed it in.