N/A: Duncan Jupp, Wimbledon, Away Kit Sponsors, Wimbledon v Everton Matchday Programme, Saturday 3rd October 1998

This week we are taking on a request post from Twitter’s excellent Pro Set Daily account. Sadly our subject was “a couple of years late to the Pro Set party”, and seemingly all other sticker and card collections, but over a career spanning nearly twenty years there were plenty of other highlights which were followed closely by a certain family member. We hope this does the trick for you and the star of your Nan’s garden mate and apologies to any pedants out there for how far we have stretched the idea of “A Sticker” being worth 500 words.

Football is a game so universal that even people who don’t particularly enjoy it would have played it at some point. Unless you happen to be a professional footballer, however, it is highly unlikely you have come up against, or played alongside, many future or former stars. They just seem to operate in a different world. When former Reading midfielder Jem Karacan used to drop into our Saturday morning kickabouts on Blackheath we had no idea that we would one day see him playing in the Premier League. To give him his due I think he very much played within himself having already trained that day but this didn’t stop one of our regulars dining out on the fact he nutmegged Karacan once. As the years have gone by and the playing has decreased my only link to the professional game has been seeing some former students make it to the very top. Former Crystal Palace forward Levi Lumeka and current West Ham United midfielder Conor Coventry were both handy GCSE historians not that I think that was on their minds when they both made their Premier League debuts.

While Levi and Conor both potentially have fulfilling careers ahead of them Jem Karacan called time on his career at the beginning of this year. He made nearly 300 professional appearances across the top four tiers of English football as well as spells in Australia and Turkey which saw him play in the Champions League. The midfielder never earned a full international cap, despite call ups, but made 25 appearances at age group level for Turkey and had the honour of captaining his father’s homeland in a number of these fixtures. When you spell it out like this it really is an impressive career but unless you supported one of the sides he turned out for, or nutmegged him once on Blackheath, it’s likely he flew under your radar. The same could be said for former Scottish under-21 international and Premier League fullback Duncan Jupp.

Jupp started his career at Fulham where he made over a century of appearances and earned a place in the PFA’s Third Division Team of the Year in both the 1994/.95 and 1995/96 seasons. In the former he scored an excellent free kick against play-off bound Preston North End which sadly fell out of the headlines due to a similar effort from Manchester United loanee David Beckham. Such impressive performances earned Jupp nine Scottish under-21 caps and a £200,000 move to Premier League Wimbledon a few days before the arrival of Ben Thatcher at Selhurst Park. Both men made only nine appearances each as the Dons finished eighth in the league and reached the semi-finals of both domestic cup competitions. Thatcher established himself more in the following campaign but the presence of the adopted Welshman, Kenny Cunningham and Alan Kimble limited Jupp to just six appearances. He continued to play a marginal role as the Dons slipped into the second tier and in 2002 Jupp dropped another division to move to Notts County.

After only eight games at Meadow Lane he was briefly reunited with former Dons boss Joe Kinnear at Luton Town before heading to the Essex coast with Southend United in the fourth tier for the 2003/04 season. Jupp established himself in the Shrimpers’ starting line up and across three campaigns made a century of appearances contributing a solitary goal. That goal, however, came in extra time of the League Two Play-Off Final against Lincoln City and secured the Essex club promotion to the third tier. He played his part in securing Southend back-to-back promotions before departing for Gillingham where he spent a season and a half before heading to non-league Bognor Regis Town. While at Bognor Jupp embarked upon his coaching career with nearby prep school Dorset House and prematurely retired from professional football to focus on training the stars of tomorrow stating “I won’t have enough hours in the week to commit properly to the club.” Clearly missing the bright lights of the Isthmian League he was back with Bognor for a brief swansong in 2010 before throwing himself back into his school level coaching.

The more deluded among us might have harboured ambitions of multiple international caps, continental trophies and domestic silverware when we were kicking a ball about in the parks and playgrounds up and down the country. There may not have been as many looking to emulate Duncan Jupp as were channelling their inner David Platt or Cuauhtemoc Blanco but if you had offered any of us a small fraction of his career we’d have bitten your hand off. You don’t make over 300 professional appearances up and down the football pyramid without having something about you whether that be in in the pressure cooker atmosphere of a play-off final or your Nan’s back garden. Get in touch with marketing if you fancy sponsoring his away kit.