Barry Horne is one of that rare breed who pursued academic achievement before embarking upon a career in professional football. In the course of acquiring a 1st Class degree in Chemistry/Materials Science, he captained the University of Liverpool football team and turned out, part-time, for Rhyl.

He made such an impression in a Welsh Cup-tie against Wrexham that the Fourth Division club signed him. They afforded him two seasons of European football – in the Cup-Winners’ Cup. Their runs were short-lived, but he scored in each of them.Whereupon, Alan Ball paid £60,000 to take Barry to Fratton Park, where he promptly won the first of his 59 caps for Wales. He had had two seasons with Portsmouth when Southampton paid a club record of £700,000 for him. He was the first player since Bill Rochford and Bill Bushby, in the summer of 1946, to make that Pompey-to-Saints move, so the pressure was on. “It took me time to win people over,” says Barry, who had under-estimated the rivalry between the two sets of supporters. A tigerish mid-fielder, he was described by former room-mate, Matt Le Tissier, as one of his “dogs of war” when Matt, newly-retired, named his “Best Saints XI” in an August 2002 matchday programme.

Matt reckoned that Barry “packed a fair old wallop”, as best demonstrated by his long-distance exocet of a last-gasp equaliser in a Fifth Round FA Cup replay in 1992: an unforgettable Dell moment for those who watched the Saints proceed to knock out Bolton – thanks to a second, less spectacular, Horne goal in extra-time.

That was undoubtedly the high-light of Barry’s one season under Ian Branfoot. His combative style and extreme fitness should have been right up Branfoot’s street. The two didn’t get on, though, and it was a tremendous thrill for Barry – a life-long Evertonian, by now the wrong side of 30 – to sign for Howard Kendall in the summer of 1992.

He enjoyed four good seasons at Goodison, tasting European football again and playing for Joe Royle, his “best manager ever”. After a season with Birmingham, he captained Huddersfield and then wound down his League career with Sheffield Wednesday, Kidderminster and Walsall. Despite his late start in the professional game, Barry made more than 500 League appearances. While at Everton, he succeeded Pat Nevin as Chairman of the PFA – but soon left, following a dispute. When his playing career ended, he returned to university, to obtain a Postgraduate Certificate of Education. He became a chemistry teacher at Kings, a private school in Chester, where he was made, inevitably, Director of Football, a position he still held in 2020. He has continued to contribute a football column in the Liverpool Echo and is an occasional pundit for Sky TV.