ALL THE LIP AND A REAL EYE FOR GOAL!

FOR most players, legendary status is the painstaking by-product of loyalty, goals, medals and memories.

- CHRIS DUNLAVY

Others become icon in a single moment. Journeyman keeper Jimmy Glass made just three appearances on loan at Carlisle United in 1999, yet the last-gasp goal he scored to prevent relegation to the Conference enshrined his name in Cumbrian folklore.

Nor will anyone forget Roy Essandoh, a jobbing striker who answered an ad on teletext, joined Wycombe Wanderers on a two-week deal and promptly scored the winner in an FA Cup quarter-final.

Chris ‘Budgie’ Kelly’s contribution to Leatherhead was, admittedly, rather more substantial. A nimble striker of considerable skill, he scored prolifically, and often spectacularly, over the course of six seasons with the Tanners.

Nevertheless, it was a single fortnight in the winter of 1975 that propelled the 26-year-old upholsterer to national fame.

Having scored a late winner to down Brighton in the FA Cup third round, Kelly appeared on that evening’s Match of the Day to ‘discuss’ the Tanners’ prospects of beating top-flight Leicester City in the next round.

“We’d all gone for a meal afterwards,” recalls Peter McGillicuddy, who played in midfield for Leatherhead. “He’d had a few beers, but he wasn’t half cut. The BBC sent a car, dragged him out and took him into London. Then he opened his mouth.”

“Leicester? They’re rubbish,” Kelly told a somewhat startled Jimmy Hill. “We’ll stuff them in the next round.”

Within hours, the Daily Mail had dubbed Kelly the ‘Leatherhead Lip’. Kelly, a natural extrovert, revelled in the role and before long was lobbing hand grenades from the back pages of national newspapers, Nationwide and even Tomorrow’s World.