A nippy little winger, Paul McDonald had had seven seasons with Hamilton Academical – as they initially yo-yoed between the SPL and Division I and then settled in the latter – when Ian Branfoot brought him to Southampton, along with his team-mate, Colin Cramb, for a combined fee of £150,000.

Not helped by a cruciate ligament injury sustained in a Reserve fixture at Chelsea that sidelined him for the best part of a season, Paul never got to start in the Premiership and, after just four appearances, coming off the bench, he joined Jimmy Case’s Brighton, on their way down to the fourth tier. The following season, he played – along with Craig Maskell – in the last-day draw at Hereford, which kept Brighton in the Football League, at the expense of their hosts. After which, Paul soon returned to Scotland, to play for several clubs, moving into coaching with the Accies, in his last season of playing for them, mainly at left-back. He then spent 10 years at Kilmarnock, as a Scottish FA community coach, until he became their Academy director in 2013.