'There's Nothing For Us To Fear Now'

AT A shade over 5ft 5in, Leon Knight didn’t look too scary. Still, not many people picked a fight with the Hackney-born striker.
 

- Chris Dunlavy

Whether it was his flying fists or his savage tongue, Knight was a fearsome adversary. During a stint at Brighton, Mark McGhee famously tried to sling him off the team coach, only to relent in the face of belligerent refusal.

So, when Darren Pratley took the striker to task during a heated training session, Swansea boss Kenny Jackett had seen enough.

Aged 21 and just two games into his Swans career, Pratley was handed the armband. “I’d only been there a few weeks,” explains the former Arsenal and Fulham trainee, now 32 and captain of Bolton. “Our regular skipper, Garry Monk, did his cruciate early doors and Kenny asked me to step in.

“Obviously, I was surprised. But he told me he’d watched me have a go at Leon and that’s why I’d been chosen.

“Leon was the big dog at Swansea in those days. Nobody messed with him. But he wasn’t running enough.

Unstoppable

“I passed him the ball – and it was a bad pass to be fair – but I got to my own ball before him. I had a right moan at him and the gaffer said ‘I liked that. Nobody ever says anything to Leon’.

“What he didn’t know was that I was already good mates with Knighty, so it was easy to have a pop at him! I’m still doing it these days on twitter and instagram.”

Over the last decade, those leadership skills have been regularly employed. At Swansea, Pratley barely missed a game for five seasons, a run culminating in promotion to the Premier League under Brendan Rodgers in 2011.