What were the Burnley recruitment team doing tonight ?

[sinkov]

Just over 20 years ago. I was watching a lot of Welsh football which featured teams such as Barry Town , TNS, Porthmadog etc. Barry were quite successful and regularly played in the qualifying rounds of European competition,against the likes of Porto and Dinamo Kyiv.They had a very good goalie called Mark Ovendale. You could tell he was going to play at a much higher level. I got hold of our wonderful club, and virtually told them to get over to North Wales, to have a look at this goalie in the very near future. They didn’t , and I heard no more from the club. At the end of that season, he was transferred to Bournemouth for £30,000. 2 seasons later he moved to Luton Town for £400,000. All I could was smile. Nothing’s changed in all that time, it seems. In the end, I just didn’t see the point of trying to help.

There was one keeper closer to home than that Mal, in the 90s Carlo Nash was playing non-league football right under our noses for Rossendale United and Clitheroe, and he'd been with the Manchester United Academy, so it wasn't as though he was a jumped up pub team keeper. Did we have him watched, did we even know he existed, no idea, but Crystal Palace did and paid Clitheroe £35,000 for him. He went on to play for Manchester City in the Premier League.