Kenwynne Jones was a 19 year-old on a mission when he tried-out at Southampton in April 2004. He had had trials in Britain in 2002 and, if he didn’t find a club this time, he would have to join Trinidad’s armed services.

“Other clubs wanted him,” Rupert Lowe claimed, as he announced the outcome of the trial: Jones, who had won his first cap 15 months earlier, was not the finished article, but he was “a tremendous athlete” and the club’s coaches believed that they could “turn him into a very good footballer.”

Kenwyne would soon discover that the manager’s idea of turning him into a footballer involved dispatching him to Sheffield Wednesday. His seven goals in seven League One matches meant that his next game was in the Premiership – his Southampton debut, coming on as a sub v Liverpool.  But even though James Beattie had just left, Peter Crouch and Kevin Phillips were about to form the strike-force that would pretty much see the Saints through to the end of the season – and relegation. Championship football was not for the likes of them and, although Ricardo Fuller was signed and Brett Ormerod was back from his latest loan-spell, Kenwyne got to play fairly regular Championship football, albeit coming off the bench half the time.

Then, in 2006-07, he formed a successful strike-partnership with Grzegorz Rasiak, scoring twice on the last day of the season to secure a place in the play-offs.

Kenwyne was still only 22.

On his day, his physical presence and ability in the air made him a handful for any defence. Even so, it was quite a claim for his manager, George Burley, to liken him, in that summer of 2007, to Didier Drogba.

That said, there were top-flight managers who thought him ready to play in the Premiership. Southampton were not keen to sell, so Kenwyne threatened to go on strike – which meant that, when he left for newly-promoted Sunderland, for £6m, his departure was acrimonious. Three seasons later, he made an £8m-move to Stoke, where Beattie had just created, as he had in 2004, a vacancy upfront – an opening that Kenwyne was now better-placed to fill, of course. Even so, he would have to compete for his place with, among others, Fuller and Crouch. After a thin 2011-12 season, with but one Premiership goal to his name, Kenwyne was still in contention in 2012-13, when he scored with a cute touch against Southampton, the fourth goal the Saints conceded to an ex-Saint – following Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and Nathan Dyer – in the first half of that season. In January 2014 he fell out with Mark Hughes, Stoke’s manager after a no-show led to a fine and within a fortnight had joined Cardiff, but he could not prevent their relegation back to the Championship.

With the Welsh club cutting costs he was loaned to Bournemouth who themselves were making the reverse journey to Cardiff and he contributed in a small way by making half a dozen appearances. Since then he had a spell in the Middle East and a short spell in the States but announced his retirement in November 2017.