591: Jamie Vardy, England, FIFA World Cup Russia 2018, Panini Official Licensed Sticker Album

Mat Jolin-Beech at the helm for today’s post with a message of hope for all of us. Well, some of us. The noises my left ankle make these days suggest that my ‘career’ might be a distant memory. I had the pleasure of playing in goal behind Mat during our third year at university and I can vouch that he is very good at running up and down the right and does own lime green Nike Mercurials. If anyone from Newport County is reading then there’s his character reference. Over to Mat.

All football fans have the same instinct in them. That ingrained belief that, given the right opportunity and chance, they could still make it as a professional footballer. If we just had the time to spend working in the gym, training with top coaches, and playing with better team mates, we would be able to carve out a career in the big leagues – ok, maybe League 2. But a contract with Newport County still counts as being a professional.

This view was set in concrete for me a few years ago when, bored one weekend, a mate and I jumped in the car and headed down to Central Park to watch the mighty Brickies play. For the uneducated amongst you, that is Sittingbourne FC. After coughing up the princely fee of £8 each for a ticket to watch two mediocre Isthmian League South East Division teams slog it out in a lower mid-table epic, we took up a space on the terrace. I can’t remember the score, or who the opposition was, but the thing that stood out to me, not the most technically blessed of players, was that I could have comfortably been playing in that match and not looked out of place.

All the non-league stereotypes were there. The gobby centre-back who saw a pass of anything less than 40 yards as continental rubbish. Why play short when the long ball is always a better option? The bald keeper who is on the back of a payday night out with the lads. That deep-lying midfielder who, at some point in his life, played at a decent level and is now wondering what happened. And the mincing number 10 who believes he is the next Messi and is just waiting to be scouted…only when the 18 stone oaf at the heart of the opposition’s defence stops kicking lumps out of him. All were present and correct. If either team needed a tireless worker to run the flanks, I’d have grabbed my boots – a fetching pair of lime green Nike Mercurials since you ask – and done a job for them.

Hope is further given to the ‘it’s not too late’ brigade by one Mr Jamie Vardy. An outcast from Sheffield Wednesday’s academy, where he was training alongside the illustrious colleagues that included my cousins (more on them another time), he descended into the non-league meat grinder. One that takes hopeful young rejects and usually spits them out as 35-year old butchers or warehouse workers. But the tenacious Mr Vardy, took this rhetoric and slapped it down.

Stints at Halifax and Fleetwood saw a move to Leicester City. He’d made it back to the near-big time and the Championship. We all know the next part of the story. A Premier League winner’s medal and a regular slot in the England squad followed. Not bad for someone who was rejected by the mighty Owls and left to fend for himself in non-league. I mean look at his pre-match ritual. Three cans of Red Bull and half a bottle of port. That makes that hungover keeper look like a lightweight.

But if someone with a lifestyle that bad can make it, there is still some hope left for me. I’m just waiting for Newport County to give me the call. I could just be the tireless worker they’re looking for.