TYLER’S THE NEW GOLDEN OLDIE

WHEN 32-year-old MarkTyler left his 416-game Peterborough United career behind to drop into the Conference with Mick Harford’s relegated Luton in the summer of 2009, the keeper would have understandably thought it would be for only one season.

Four years as the club’s most consistent performer later, and still stuck in Non-League’s bottleneck, he’d have been forgiven for thinking he had played his last Football League game.

Then John Still, the man who gave him his Posh debut as a 17year-old, walked into Kenilworth Road in February 2013 andTyler started to believe that he could, like Still’s former Dagenham keeper Tony Roberts, have a footballing renaissance.

A year on and with a championship winner’s medal in his trusty hands, he’ll restart his League career at the ripe old age of 37.

“John gave me my debut all those many moons ago, so fair play to the powers-that-be for getting the right man,” said Tyler, an ever-present in the league during the title romp.

“I didn’t think it would take so long, but in the first season I realised what a difficult league the Conference was.We had a great squad – lads like Kev Nicholls, Kevin Gallen and Tommy Craddock – but we failed in the play-off semi-final, and I thought ‘Wow, this is going to be tough’.

“The club probably went through the stage of picking the wrong managers, but they’ve got the right man now and the success we’ve had this year has been brilliant. “Personally I was delighted with the gaffer coming in because I’ve worked with him before and I knew that Robbo played for him until he was ages old!

“He’s looked after me. I’ve had my problems with my back in the past, but he’s just left me alone to my own devices, and as long as I’m on that pitch at three o’clock on a Saturday, he’s not complaining.”