Having grown up supporting his local team, Southsea-born Jake Thomson was disappointed to be turned away by Portsmouth, after a trial. Southampton proved to be keener and Jake was soon part of the Academy set-up that won four U-18 League titles. What’s more, he was capped by England at U-16, U-17 and U-18 levels. But Stern John, with whom he got to play first-team football in 2008-09, had other ideas. He recommended Jake, who has a Trinidadian father, to Trinidad and Tobago. Jake duly went to the U-20 World Cup tournament in Egypt in September 2009. Playing against the host nation in front of 80,000-odd partisan Egyptians and “about 13 Trinidadians” was, for him, “the thrill of a lifetime.”

He was immediately promoted to the senior squad for two World Cup qualifiers, in which he lined up alongside Kenwyne Jones. He returned to England to give an optimistic match-day interview to Bob Brunskell. It was now over a year since a debut that had been followed by spasmodic right-flank outings for Southampton’s Dutch bosses. He hadn’t started under new manager, Alan Pardew, but he had been coming off the bench at the start of the 2009-10 season. Amid joking with Brunskell about being mistaken for Theo Walcott,

Jake looked forward to exploiting his “main assets” – his “pace and dribbling”.

He would never get to put that self-assessment to the test. In fact, he had made his last first-team appearance three weeks before his Trinidadian debut in Egypt and was returning from World Cup football to go on loan to League Two Torquay. Released by Pardew in May 2010, Jake joined League One Exeter, where his occasional substitute appearances, when not on loan to League Two Cheltenham, included the Grecians’ 4-0 defeat at St Mary’s on New Year’s Day. Despite being released by Exeter at the end of that one season, Jake retains fond memories of working with their manager, ex-Saint Paul Tisdale, a “top man”, who was “a joy to play for.”

He now flitted around the Conference, including a spell at Forest Green Rovers, managed by one of his Saints Academy coaches, Dave Hockaday. He started the 2012-13 season as a regular at Newport, but had a mid-season loan-spell, within the Blue Square Premier, at Lincoln. He returned for a run of outings that came to a halt with his 24th appearance in late March. One more game would have triggered a clause extending his contract. Refusing Newport’s request to have the clause rescinded, Jake was frozen out of their return to the Football League, via the Conference play-offs. There was no way back. Jake would remain in the Conference at Salisbury City, when he might have been in League Two, playing against Portsmouth. He then ended up on the books of various non-League team in the East Hants area while becoming an agent with Key Sports Management. In 2026 he was in the AFC Stoneham team that won the FA Vase at Wembley.