Hardly had he signed professional for Southampton than 18 year-old Steve Basham had a new manager in Graeme Souness. He was immediately included in the pre-season fixtures in Scotland, so it wasn’t exactly “a bolt out of the blue”, he recalls, to be a sub for the opener against Chelsea – a game delayed until the Sunday for the cameras to focus on the visitors’ debutants, Gianluca Vialli and Franck Lebouef. It was nevertheless “a big surprise” to him when he came off the bench to join that company. But then the new manager went shopping for his own foreign talent, so Basham couldn’t believe it when, come February, he had his first start – partnering Egil Ostenstad, upfront at Old Trafford.

That would, however, be his only League start for his home-town club. Souness continued to buy forwards – Micky Evans and Kevin Davies – while his successor, Dave Jones, brought in James Beattie and Mark Hughes. So Steve had a couple of loan spells, either side of his one Premiership goal – a stunner at Ewood Park. While not keen to leave Southampton, he found manager David Moyes “so enthusiastic” at third-tier Preston that he agreed to make his second loan permanent for a fee of £200,000. Having won a champions’ medal in his first season, he broke a leg in the second.

He never re-established himself and moved to Oxford. Relegated to the Conference with them, he then won two more promotion medals with Exeter – from the Conference through to League One in two seasons. Whereupon, he reverted to the Blue Square Premier with Luton, whence he was soon in the Zamaretto League – at Brackley, just up the road from his Woodstock home – and then in the Evo-Stik League with Oxford City, an even shorter journey to work. His two goals in a 4-2 play-off win over Totton in 2012 took his second Oxford club into the Conference North.

Having successfully completed his accountancy exams he became Head of Finance at the Oxford-based Paul Basham Associates. In 2019 when starting the London marathon he bumped into ex-Dell colleague, Mathew Bound.