“It was funny,” Dean Gordon begins to detail how Crystal Palace brought the lad - who went to school in Thornton Heath and grew up in Norbury - across from White Hart Lane.
“I was travelling to Spurs’ stadium twice-a-week with a lad called Mark Waldron, who was also a Croydon lad.
“Looking back on it now, being 14-years-old, travelling from East Croydon all the way up, on the train, on the tube and on the bus for a good year was a good grounding for me – I had to grow up really quickly.