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People bristle at the suggestion football began in 1992 and the implicit erasure of the game’s glorious past. But the dawn of the Premier League, if not Year Zero, is a handy marking post where one kind of football passed the baton to another. What came before was BS: Before Sky.

It was not instant glamour – overnight Ruud Gullit, a spontaneous outbreak of Emirates Stadium hospitality suites. Instead, the nascent Premier League was much the same as quaint old Division One, with added cheerleaders. The pitches were shoddy, some terraces remained and Wimbledon played the entire first season without a shirt sponsor.

The image Sky used to sell its new asset was a squad photo with a player from every club, each wearing their own team’s kit. This was the billboard component in a blizzard of hype, the Big Bang which eventually turned English football into a world-straddling megabrand.

While the hoary clips of Brian Deane’s goal and Richard Keys’s salmon jacket are now showing their age, the promotional material retains some of the hope of a fresh start, the promised ‘whole new ball game’. The TV advert which accompanied the squad picture remains absurdly exciting. Cue Simple Minds:

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No Photoshopping was involved: the shoot really did involve dragging 22 footballers to a warehouse near Wembley on a summer’s Sunday morning in 1992 to pose for the picture and film the bulk of the TV ad.

As we approach the Premier League’s 30th anniversary, I attempted to speak to all of them. The cast bestrode eras, ranging from John Wark, an FA Cup winner in 1978 to the emerging promise of 21-year-old Manchester United winger Lee Sharpe.

Recollections about their fee varies (some said it was as much as £1,000 for a day’s work) and their stories about what has happened to them since encompass everything from the creation of property empires to prison time; Hollywood films to divorce firms. Thankfully, all are still alive.

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It is a Tuesday night, during half-time of a Champions League semi-final, when I dial a number which purportedly belongs to Vinnie Jones (Chelsea).

As the most celebrated member of the Sky 22, thanks to possibly the most unlikely movie career in the history of sport, he feels like the least likely to respond – particularly when the dial tone indicates he is abroad.

In fact, Jones is more than happy to chat. He is in New Zealand, filming a new version of TV show Hunted in the wilderness of Queenstown on the lower island. He is host, rather than an escapee, the least you would expect from an acting career with more than 100 credits. The Sky advert might have sown his thespian seed. “That would have been my first role I think,” he says.

Jones, 57, needs little prompting for his memories of the day. “I had a nightmare because I didn’t really know what it was and I’d had a really good night out on the Saturday,” he says. “I don’t really remember being there, to be fair. Those were my drinking days.”

Unlike every other player involved, Jones – then at Chelsea, a more homespun club in those days – did not come out of the experience richer. “I was sponsored by Asics but I turned up in what I had on the night before. One of the lads let me borrow their boots, they were Reebok or something.

“I said to one of the geezers, ‘I’m sponsored by Asics’. He said: ‘It’s alright, we’ll paint it out, you’ll be on the back row, no one will ever know.’ Lo and behold the commercial came out and Asics pulled their f---- sponsorship. Everyone else did well out of it, I lost a three-year contract and loads of money.”

Shortly afterwards, Jones negotiated a move back to Wimbledon during a round of golf. He did not yet have a mobile phone, so the golf club’s secretary came out on a buggy to relay Sam Hamman’s latest offer between holes. Jones gamely posed for some meta-promotional activity, climbing a ladder to nail his new Wimbledon shirt over the Chelsea one he was wearing on the billboard.

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“We were the acorn being planted,” he reflects. “It’s obviously a massive oak tree now. There were a lot of people saying it wouldn’t work. The idea of people paying for it in their houses, people weren’t too optimistic about it.”

Before he gets back to his shoot I wonder if he could help with an evasive member of the Sky squad. He’s not still in touch with Hans Segers by any chance?

“I saw Hans the other day, funnily enough, he was outside Toys R Us.”

That’s odd, I think. Toys R Us is long gone in the UK, perhaps it is still a going concern in New Zealand? Is he sure?

“Yeah, he was giving games away.”

I’ve been Vinnied.

Ian Brightwell

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Jones’s name comes up more than anyone’s when asking the remaining 21 about their memories of the day. Most have not travelled as far.

Ian Brightwell (Manchester City) lives in Congleton, 20 miles south of Manchester and comes from spectacular sporting stock. His mother, Ann Packer, won gold in the 800m and silver in 400m at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. His father, Robbie, was a European champion and 400m record-holder who captained that Great Britain team in Japan.

“I just remember Vinnie taking over the show,” says Brightwell. “What a character, he was hilarious. He wasn’t taking the mickey out of the players, he was just telling stories and having a laugh. You can see how the Crazy Gang operated. He had everyone in the palm of his hands. If he’d ever gone into management he’d have been top class, he had that ability to bring people together.”

Brightwell, now 54, tried management but found it tough. “It wasn’t for me. You’ve got to be a certain type of person, so thick-skinned. You can’t think of anyone else, just you and the football club. I’m not that sort of person, so anyone that's done it I respect.”

Along with a property business he now works as a matchday ambassador for City and you suspect his careful eloquence is perfect hospitality fodder, particularly given his manager at Maine Road in 1992 was the famously foul-mouthed Peter Reid, who gives a team-talk in the TV ad.

“I’d say he was less polite in real life,” says Brightwell, with a laugh. “He really was a great motivator, but he didn’t stand for any nonsense.

“Back then there wasn’t that much time spent on tactics. We did set plays, who you’re going to mark, but it was almost like you should know how to play, you're a professional footballer. And if you don't do it, you're out of the team.

“So there wasn't as much detail going into games as I'm sure there is now. But you were expected to be able to play, to compete and to make decisions for yourself.”

Andy Sinton

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The club ambassadorial cottage industry is rich pickings for players of this generation. Andy Sinton (QPR) is another who has gone down this path, and we meet in a box overlooking the pristine turf at Rangers’ not-pristine Loftus Road,

Sinton co-commentated Rangers fans through lockdown, the quietness of behind-closed-doors games mirroring his own experiences at the end of his playing career. He bounced around different industries after retiring: artificial grass, food tolerances, fire alarms, a bit of coaching and non-league management.

His gaze keeps returning to the pitch where his performances contributed to QPR briefly becoming London’s best Premier League club and won him 12 England caps.

“You’ll never replicate being a player. It is the best thing you can do in your life. A packed stadium getting stick, getting adulation. What fills the void when you finish? I can understand why some players struggle. You miss that regimented approach of being in at the same time, being told what to eat, what to wear.”

Sinton is proud of his part in Premier League history, but did not over-exert himself during filming of the advert. “They put me on a treadmill,” he remembers. “I made sure it was set really slow.”

Gordon Durie

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For Gordon Durie (Spurs) – another who works in hospitality, for Glasgow Rangers – the main memory of the day was a scene shot in the shower.

“Yep, I was in there – a few dodgy moments,” he says. "My wife saw the advert not long ago, it gave her a good chuckle. She said, ‘Is that you?’”

Durie had left Chelsea for Spurs the year before. “Ken Bates needed the money,” but hung on to his nickname, one of the best in football: Jukebox. Say it aloud before his surname.

“It’s still in use, my son Scott gets called the same. He didn’t realise what it was all about, I had to explain it was an old music programme from years ago."

The advert presents an all-smiling image of footballers as brothers-in-arms, all winks to camera and playful joshing. The reality, as Durie admits, is rather different.

“Through your career you have friends at clubs. You always say to players and players say to you ‘keep in touch’. But it happens once in a blue moon.”

Alan Kernaghan

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Alan Kernaghan (Middlesbrough) agrees. He was also in the showers. “Eight or nine of us stood there under these makeshift showers – a bit strange” – and I ask him what the topics of conversation were.

“Probably money.”

And is he still in touch with many former team-mates? “No. It’s the usual footballing thing. It’s very transient. You make acquaintances not friends a lot of the time.”

Now 55, he lives in Northern Ireland, where his family moved when he was a child. His last management job was at Glentoran and he currently works two days a week as a scout for Glasgow Rangers.

He sounds gruff rather than wistful about life in the game. It is a sentiment echoed by many of the players I speak to. But Kernaghan is clearly not holding too many negative feelings about his playing days. I ask every player to send me a picture of themselves in the shirt they wore on the day if they still have one. He is the only one who obliges.

The current roles of Sinton, Durie and Brightwell are common enough among former pros; several of our 22, however, are still earning a living at the sport’s sharp end.

Gordon Strachan

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Gordon Strachan (Leeds) is director of football at Dundee, the club where he started his career, commuting from the Midlands. “I’m usually meant to stay for six days and it ends up being three weeks,” he says. “It’s hectic.”

Leeds were champions at the time of the ad, which was unexpected. His brief when joining from Manchester United in 1989 was to lead by example and take the club back into the top flight from Division Two. Two years after promotion they won the title, their first since the days of Don Revie.

He was the oldest player on the shoot, aged 35, and had one of the best playing CVs, even if he recalls the day with self-deprecation.

“I shouldn’t have been there – the first one they would have asked was Gary Speed. That would have been fantastic for all the young ladies, and the older ladies come to that. Unfortunately they got me. I think they asked David Batty, too, but Batts being Batts he just said no. So I think I was third choice, and that just about sums up my life. I donned my latest blue Versace jacket and wandered down there.”

Does anything else stick out from the day? “Not really, no. It was 30 years ago. I can’t even remember what happened yesterday.”

At one point in the clip he is offered a comically oversized pair of trainers. Does that ring any bells? “Absolutely not.”

He does remember sitting on the back row of the bus in the ad, as he did throughout his career. “That’s where all the naughty boys used to go, and I could cause havoc back there. Only Sir Alex could hear what I was saying, he had radar hearing.”

Ian Butterworth

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Another who has stayed in the game is Ian Butterworth (Norwich City), now chief scout for Burnley. He lives in Warrington, between two airports and close to the M6, an ideal part of the country if you need to watch a lot of football.

With Burnley’s fate uncertain when we spoke, his job sounds significantly more stressful than hobnobbing with pre-game lunch-eaters. “I enjoy it still, watching a game. You miss the buzz of playing but that’s gone. I’m not particularly old, I’m 58, but I’m still in the industry I’ve been in since I was 16.

“You try and survive, don’t you? It’s dog eat dog, everybody thinks they can do a better job than you. You’ve just got to keep surviving and doing your job and hope someone likes you.”

His career never fully recovered after he damaged his knee in an off-field accident. The Sky ad “was more like a pop video than a sports trailer, it was an eye-opener really of what was going to come.

“It was hyped up, a bit overblown, but it kind of worked didn’t it? It whet the appetite of the public and the players.”

Hans Segers

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Further down the food chain, and no thanks to Vinnie Jones, I finally track down Hans Segers (Wimbledon) close to where he was born in Holland.

Segers was a stalwart for Wimbledon, making 262 appearances and even shrugging off his arrest, trial and subsequent acquittal in a match-fixing trial in 1997, alongside Bruce Grobbelar and John Fashanu (hence Jones’ gag earlier). He was subsequently found guilty by the Football Association of breaking betting regulations but that did not end his involvement in the game: he worked at Spurs and PSV Eindhoven as a goalkeeping coach, and is now employed by Dutch second division team FC Eindhoven.

“Looking back, those were my peak days, in my early 30s,” he says. “We stayed in the Premier League for eight years, it was quite an achievement.

“My daughter sent clips of me, she’d seen the advert somewhere. People still recognise me from it. My daughter thinks it’s amazing she says ‘Dad, you’re still a legend.’

Tim Sherwood

Tim Sherwood (Blackburn Rovers) stands with Strachan as the only members of the 22 to subsequently work as a full-time manager in the Premier League. After stints with Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa he is now a pundit for Sky Sports and Premier League Productions.

“I did all the bits they asked me – the line-up, the pictures, on the bus, even the bit in the shower,” he says. “None of us really realised that there was so much change coming to football or, I suppose, that the change would continue for years. When I retired [in 2005] I said to my missus, ‘I’ve had the best years. The bottom will fall out of it’. How wrong I was. The Premier League has gone to a different level."

His club then would become the earliest example of the new league’s possibilities. Blackburn had money, then briefly a team of stars at their peak.

“People say to me now, ‘Can Newcastle do what Blackburn did?’ I think they can but I would suggest they won’t be as quick as we were. In our day it was just Manchester United you had to catch. Now Manchester City and Liverpool are so far out ahead and then you have Chelsea a little bit further behind.

“There was no financial fair play then, and we never had a transfer window. It felt like we had a new player every day for a while. One of the old brigade would be having their clothes and their peg in the changing room moved and someone else coming in to take their place. It was totally ruthless.”

Lee Sharpe

Five of the 22 earn their money from outside football. Lee Sharpe (Manchester United) lives in Spain and is a professional golfer as well as the owner of Sharpey’s Sports Bar in Xàbia, Alicante. He is in Thailand when we speak, playing golf and making after-dinner appearances to coincide with United’s pre-season tour.

Have the Saudis been in touch? “Not yet, no!”

Sharpe has no fire and brimstone for the LIV defectors, though. “At the end of the day they’re self-employed people and you’re guaranteed a good wage and plenty of time at home. I can’t say I blame them.”

He remembers being sent to do the Sky ad as punishment by Alex Ferguson for some misdemeanour. He was the youngest of the 22, which must have been intimidating. “Yeah absolutely, I was s—--- myself. That’s why it was nice to have Vinnie there, he killed the shyness. He put everyone at ease. He was my lasting memory of it. He was loud, lairy, on everyone’s case.”

No nostalgia is required to make playing for United in the 90s any rosier: the club were on the verge of ending their 26-year wait for a league title, and went on to claim another six in the eight subsequent seasons.

“It was an unbelievable team to be a part of. We were beating teams by half-time. And it was a great time to be around Manchester, too. The Haçienda, Oasis. I wasn’t really a Haçienda type, in my eight years in Manchester I went there about half a dozen times. But the buzz, the vibe of the place. The whole of Manchester was flying at the time."

He had a closer first-hand experience of Oasis. “We had a guy that used to come round the Cliff, the training ground, and valet the cars while the lads trained and his mate Liam Gallagher used to come and help him, before they were famous. We knew he was a City fan so we were a bit concerned he would start scratching them."

Did he give him a good tip? “Always! I always tip well.”

Tony Daley

Tony Daley (Aston Villa) was another whose career was spiking. The winger had just returned from Sweden with Graham Taylor’s doomed Euro 92 squad. “It was probably the peak of my career, I was playing good football and really looking forward to the Premier League,” he says. “You could immediately see the difference in the amount of press that were there, the amount of interviews you had to do.

“It was a big honour for me to do that [the ad], to be chosen for it. Probably 10 years, 15 years later I realised the impact of it all."

Born five minutes from Villa Park he now lives in Sutton Coldfield, just outside Birmingham. In the ad he is lifting weights, foreshadowing his life after football. He worked as head of sport science at Sheffield United, spent 10 years at Wolves and is now five years into running 7D, which provides one-to-one personal training. Predictably, he is in spectacular shape.

“People say it’s crazy and that it was horrific but I used to actually enjoy pre-season. All those runs, long distance, shuttle runs, it never bothered me. So it was a natural progression.”

Not for Daley the ennui of retirement and middle aged spread. “I had a direction. After my injury when I was 26, 27 although I played for another few years after that I knew my career was ending and I knew I wanted to do something else I enjoyed doing.

“Whether you’re playing in the Premier League for £10,000-a-week, or in League Two on significantly less you’ve still got that adulation of the crowd and to have that taken away it can be very difficult.

“I had older players who I looked up to, friends and family saying: ‘Remember there’s life after football and most people are retired by 30.’ You’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you. But it’s my personality, when I do something I put 110 per cent in. I loved playing football and I equally enjoy what I do now. That focus was there for me, but focus was never an issue."

Gary Charles

Gary Charles (Nottingham Forest) was not so fortunate. His post-playing career was a sorry story, taking in alcoholism and two stints in jail, once for drink-driving, and again for threatening a bouncer. The latter occurred in 2012, while he was already serving a suspended sentence for assaulting a woman in a taxi office.

Happily, things have now improved. He is a busy football agent, and when we speak – just after the opening of the summer transfer window – he estimates he is averaging 150 phone calls a day, a roster of 32 players keeping him busy. “Some days I don’t know how I get time to sleep.”

Charles also coaches and gives presentations about mental health, with his agency Tornado Sports Management aiming to provide welfare as well as conventional representation. “I had my ups and downs and had a decent enough career to give players the right guidance," he says.

He was second-youngest in the advert, behind Sharpe, but felt no nerves. “All the intimidation went from my body once I’d played under Brian Clough. We were brought up to respect our elders in football, I always looked up to the older players in the Forest dressing room. But I was quite shy."

Many former players, usually joking to some extent, lament missing out on modern-day wages. I wonder if Charles may have benefited instead from the current emphasis on mental wellbeing?

“I like to think I’ve played a part in that,” he points out. “I do a lot of talks in schools and prisons and it’s something that I enjoy. I got some help and it’s important to help others. I struggled in silence and I know that others do as well. The sooner the stigma around addiction lifts it would help a lot of people.

“I’ve not drunk for a long time now. I’d just had enough really. I was a quiet lad, never really a drinker and it was a bit confusing for me.

“Am I envious of anything today? No. Memories are more important than finances for me. I keep myself busy and I’m really content in my life.”

Mark Wright

Mark Wright (Liverpool) was another who was at the height of his powers in the summer of 1992. He had last been seen on an English pitch lifting the FA Cup in what had – by common consent – been an underwhelming season for Liverpool.

He came to his current career in somewhat unusual circumstances.

“They wanted some kind of figurehead in divorce – it sounds bad doesn’t it?” he says, ruefully. “Having been through a very awkward divorce I got involved in Fair Result, a divorce company. It’s quite unique, fixed fees, for people who don’t want to go to court, it’s less hassle for all parties, including the children. I wish it had been around when I was getting divorced.

“We want to help ex-footballers, ex-sportspeople. That’s why I’m involved in it, because sometimes they get taken to the cleaners.”

Carl Bradshaw

Wright is also involved in a building company, as is Carl Bradshaw (Sheffield United) who trained as a bricklayer as his playing days wound down. “We owned a few houses and instead of people coming in to do the work I did it myself, then I got my NVQs.

“I enjoy messing about with wood more than anything, I just got into brick work. I don’t mind it, it’s alright. It pays the bills, doesn't it?

“In our era, we weren’t the top paid players. We earnt enough, we were comfortable, but we’ve still got bills to pay."

Bradshaw took the long throw which led to the first ever Premier League goal, scored by Brian Deane against Manchester United, and still holds the record for most Premier League appearances for Sheffield United.

What sticks out from the filming the advert? “It was a good day out to be honest. Johnny Wark was a nice chap.”

John Wark

John Wark (Ipswich) is still a nice chap. He turns 65 on August 4 and has now lived south of the border for 50 years. You would not know it, given the Glasgow accent remains strong. “I’m still trying,” he sighs. “But I can’t get the Suffolk accent.”

He was planning to retire around 1992 in his mid-thirties but ended up playing until he was 39. “I think I won player of the year three out of the four final years. My injuries all came at Liverpool.”

It was a well-trodden path on the pitch for him, moving further back towards his own goal as he aged. “You read the game rather than running about and the manager gave me a lot of days off. The boys used to call me Man Friday because it was the only day I turned up.”

Wark has a secret to reveal about the Sky advert, and the scenes filmed in the ‘gym’. “The funny thing is there were no weights on the machine, you had to pretend.”

Wark nailed his part, to the extent that whenever he sees the ad he is briefly duped into thinking he was pumping iron. A spectacular bit of acting, although not his first time.

“I’m used to it with Escape to Victory,” he says, of the 1981 film which represents that most glorious and under-represented of genres – the sporting war film.

“I had two lines, and I was dubbed. When I went to the premiere with Alan Brazil and Eric Gates. It comes to my bit and I think: ‘That’s not my voice, that’s an Edinburgh accent.”

He now works in hospitality for every Ipswich home game, then does the same at Anfield when Ipswich are away. The between-football days are filled with looking after his cocker spaniel, and quite ridiculously, playing five-a-side every Thursday night.

“I play in Sudbury, then we go to the gym for a bit. I’m still moaning at everybody. I still want to win all the time. I go to Pilates, which I wish I’d done when I was playing.”

Andy Ritchie

Andy Ritchie (Oldham) was not quite at the same veteran stage as Wark, but at 32 was still one of the more grizzled members of the 22.

He now works for Manchester United as a corporate host on matchdays and as a commentator for MUTV and BBC Radio Manchester. “One morning, after I’d finished training, Joe Royle came up to me and said he wanted to see me afterwards. I couldn’t remember if I’d done anything wrong. He told me the Premier League and Sky wanted to do an advert, and you’re one of the most sensible ones so I’m going to send you to do it.”

He remembers a minor gathering between some of the players the night before, and some refreshments. “There were one or two sore heads.”

Sky might have been setting the tone for a glamorous new era of football, but that is the magic of a good camera, fierce lighting and excellent post-production.

“It wasn’t salubrious at all, it was just a big depot with a fire engine outside which provided the water for the showers. It was cold, might I add. The lads in the shower scene got the short straw, when the water was put on it was absolutely freezing. They must have done quite a few takes.”

Ritchie was on weightlifting duties and now that Wark has blown the case wide open, Ritchie’s already-funny grimace takes on an extra level of delight. “They said they wanted us to look as if we were doing it, to make it as authentic as we could. I might have hammed the acting up a bit.”

His old club have fallen the furthest, dropping out of the league at the end of this season, the only former Premier League team to do so. “I’m absolutely gutted,” he says. “They need somebody in there with some big bucks, it’s very difficult to get out of the National League.”

Ritchie also remembers filming some pieces to camera which were not used in the advert, imaginary interviews. He suspects Sky were scouting for punditry talent.

John Salako

That may have been the route into TV for John Salako (Crystal Palace), who strolls into a cavernous City hotel bar like he could still play, and has the modern footballer’s interest in cryptocurrency to match.

During half an hour together we are interrupted twice by well-lubricated city boys who clearly had one of the best days of their life with him on the ubiquitous golf days which seem to account for roughly 40 per cent of retired 90s footballers’ social lives.

Salako is upbeat and terrific company but more than most of the 22, his career is tinged with regret. In 1992 he was back in the Palace team after a cruciate ligament injury the previous season.

“I was going to sign for Bari. I’d started learning Italian, it was coming along nicely. Driving to the game where I did it I thought, ‘This is coming together, this is where I want to be.' Then, at 4am, I was coming home from the hospital after being told I might not play again. Yeah, that was a long day.”

When the Premier League kicked off Salako was injured again and did some punditry, beginning a long relationship with Sky. “I was sitting there with Richard Keys. I had the jackets, you know. I saw it all unfolding.

“I remember them saying: ‘If your knee doesn’t work out you’ve got a job here.’ I should have just stayed there! I could be…” he tails off. “It was never really a decision though, if I could play I was going to.”

He did indeed return for Palace and ended his career with more than 500 appearances. In between he always put his hand up for Sky Sports gigs. “When someone didn’t turn up, George Best or Rodney Marsh, I would jump in a car and be there. They gave me the nickname ‘Bognor,’ because I was the last resort.

“Perhaps I was a little bit too honest, a little bit naive to start with. Steve Coppell told me to get my head down and concentrate on football. But when you get injured you go into self-preservation mode. You need plan B and plan C. You realise how fragile your career is.”

For many years he was a familiar in-ground presence on Soccer Saturday, but is not a victim of the drive to refresh that programme. Salako gave up his contract in 2015 to take a coaching role at Palace.

“Stupidly!” he exclaims. “What was I doing? I should have just stayed with Sky. I need shooting. I still wake up in a cold sweat most mornings, thinking: ‘Why did I do that?’” He seemed to be joking when he started that thought; by the end? Not so much.

He still works in TV, co-commentating on this year’s Africa Cup of Nations, and does not expect to return to coaching “That was a pipe dream really, I should have known better. But the opportunity to be back in the Premier League and back in the dressing room was too strong to refuse. You do have to take a chance and follow your heart, but maybe I’ll just stick to following my head now.”

Tim Flowers

Tim Flowers (Southampton) is trying to get back in. He was last in charge of Solihull Moors and is out for a walk close to his home between Solihull and Redditch when we speak.

Peter Shilton and John Burridge were his predecessors in goal for Southampton, two names unequivocally from the past. As the coming man, was there any sense of change in the air for Flowers? “Not really. You knew there was a little bit more money coming into the game, a little bit more razzmatazz. You didn’t know whether it would last. A lot of different sports have tried to glamourise it, make it easier on the eye.

“But agents aren’t stupid. All of a sudden there was an influx of money, so it didn’t take long. I was on £250 at Southampton and I’d signed a four-year deal. Then you’re reading about other lads on £2,000, £3,000-a-week. Guys want parity.

“When I moved to Blackburn it was a world record for a goalkeeper. Believe it or not my first contract there wasn’t a colossal increase. I was there for seven or eight years so my second contract was better, but it’s gone now into a completely different stratosphere. It’s mind-boggling really.”

David Hillier / David Hirst / Peter Beardsley

Some members of the 22 are more evasive. David Hillier (Arsenal) politely declines. He works for Arsenal as a matchday commentator and is another with a sideline in building. The trail towards David Hirst (Sheffield Wednesday) and Peter Beardsley (Everton) ebbs away over several months of unanswered messages.

Lee Hurst

There is also one big mystery which needs to be resolved: just who is the player wearing the Coventry strip?

He has been frequently identified as Andy Pearce – wrongly as it turned out. Even some of his fellow players had no clue as to who he was. As Alan Kernaghan puts it: “There was a boy from Coventry who I didn’t know and I hadn’t heard of since.”

It takes the detective work of Sarah Morris from the Coventry City former players’ association to set me right. The man I am looking for is Lee Hurst, who made fewer than 50 appearances in a curtailed career for Coventry and surely is your best possible answer should this extremely niche category ever appear on Pointless.

The 1992-93 season was his big break: he made 35 consecutive appearances at one stage and scored two goals. The next summer Coventry manager Bobby Gould took his squad to an army camp in Aldershot as part of their pre-season training.

“We went on the assault course. I came off a 12-foot wall into wet sand and my knee just buckled – I had done my cruciate. I was stretchered off and taken back to Coventry in a brace. It wasn’t playing, which was the most frustrating thing.

Hurst was 23 and had not just mangled his ligament but damaged bones inside his knee joint. He never played for Coventry again. Gould was very apologetic and Hurst speaks warmly about getting his first team chance under him.

“Should professional footballers have been on assault courses? My answer now is obviously no, but at that time it seemed exciting and different. I wish it hadn’t had happened, I wish we hadn’t had gone, but there’s nothing you can change about that is there?

Hurst did recover enough to play in the second tier of American soccer where the pace of the game suited him but the back-to-back away games did not.

He is still proud of his brush with fame in the advert. “It was everywhere, you couldn’t turn a corner without it being on a billboard, I was privileged to represent Coventry.” The misidentification in the years since has confused him though. “It’s really weird because he’s 6ft 4in to my 5ft 10in.”

Now he coaches on Monday nights and works as a painter and decorator. Business is booming, “I’m fully booked until November. The phone’s still ringing, too.

“My uncle has always been a decorator, he took me under his wing and taught me. After that it was full steam ahead.

What’s his speciality? “I’m a master at everything, Thom.”

While Hurst’s faintly tragic story is an outlier among the Sky squad, his optimism is not. This was a group of players on the cusp of something enormous. Thirty years on we find them forging diverse paths, Most are philosophical, mostly they seem content, universally they are grateful. For the chance, for the fun, for living the dream.

Some wistfulness is inevitable, as their era is fading from memory. To those who remember the confected excitement of 1992, the Premier League still seems like a relatively new development. In fact, it was a generation ago. Today’s kids will not remember a time before it any more than we can remember a sport without substitutions.

Perhaps they need a history lesson, and a re-make of the advert. What’s Vinnie Jones up to?

Posted By: DrDublin on August 3rd 2022 at 12:10:38

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