The Football Interview on the Football Daily Podcast and BBC Eye Player.

Firstly, Darrods, we're obviously sitting in Hick as you're a footballer.

That's why everyone knows you.

So let's start with what does football mean to you?

Everything.

You know, it's something that I'm in a privileged position that I get to do day in, day out. And it's probably all that I've known from such a young age. So football to me, yeah, it's obviously everything. You mentioned there it's all you've known since a young age. What's your earliest memory of playing? Probably the first club that I played for, a team called Lempster Miners. The venue, the big playing fields, is still there now. Went home in the summer was still there. So yeah, that would be my first kind of memory and it's kind of carried on as well. I've had brothers and sisters that have played there as well and friends that have been there and to see it still going as well. When I go home, it's so nice to go back and just I remember when I was that age and just playing on the field,

we're not a carer in the world and just the biggest smile on my face. So yeah, I'd say that

would probably be my first kind of memory. Talk to me about, you say Lempster Miners, it's called.

Talk to me about what that was like as a team. How old you were when you joined?

I think I must have started when I was about four or something, something really young.

But I played there up until 15, something like that.

It's quite a small area where I've grown up, so all our friends at school were basically playing in the same team.

And we just grew up together playing.

My dad was the manager for a lot of years as well, so that was always fun. I started at such a young age, I had Hereford as well, which was more like a development school, so to speak, but we had the same players from my hometown team going to Hereford as well, because, like I said, it's not the biggest area in terms of encatchment of players coming in from all over the place. So we pretty much had the same team for our local, local team and then one that was about 20 minutes away. You mentioned there that you went on to play for Hereford. Can you remember making that move or can you remember how you got to Hereford? Like I said, I was playing for Lempton training a couple of times a week. It was called like a development school or soccer foundation or something

like that, like the grassroots level. And then at the time I think Hereford were, you know,

when I was always growing up there was always in the football league, always in the conference.

So there was always like a system kind of there, a youth team. And then I think when I left

school, because I only done my first year, so when I left

school is when I got my first youth team contract, which to me was incredible. I had grown

up watching my local team week in week out and then to have the opportunity in the youth team

playing and then to play for them for them as well was incredible.

I was going to say given this sounds like such a local community and quite tight-knit,

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