Albert Adomah did not forget his roots after this week being picked for the Ghana World Cup squad to fly out to Brazil.
The Middlesbrough winger was playing park football for Chiswick amateur side Old Meadonians less than a decade ago, arrving at the Riverside Stadium via spells at Harrow Borough, Barnet and Bristol City.
But one of the first people Adomah texted after learning of his call up for Ghana, for whom he has already won 13 caps, was his old manager at Old Meadonians, Paul Rumley.
Playing in front of thousands in Brazil, not to mention a worldwide television audience of millions, will be a far cry from when he was playing in front of a man and his dog at Riverside Lands in the Amateur Football Combination.
He is still fondly remembered by those who saw him join Old Meadonians as a raw 16-year-old in 2003, as club chairman Derek Barnett told our sister paper the Hounslow Chronicle back in 2010.
He said: "We could see Albert was very talented from the off. He started out in our ninth team, but was very soon playing in the first team.
"He was playing in the first team and scoring regularly by the age of 17, we would always be sending match reports through with Albert having scored three or four goals.
"But he was also a lovely lad with a great character, and we’re really pleased to have seen him do so well for himself. If anyone deserves success, it’s Albert."
While at Old Meadonians, Adomah started a course in decorative finishing and industrial painting at the College of North West London, at the same campus, then known as Willesden Technical College, where Stuart Pearce studied to be an electrician in the 1970s.
