NOTHING PURRED LIKE MY BENTLEY

HAVING a chat with a colleague in the office the other day, we were talking about the best players we have witnessed scrapping it out in Non-League football.

I didn’t get the chance to see Jamie Vardy lace his boots up in the lower leagues, but even if I had, he would be doing well to displace my all-time favourite: Morecambe’s man-mountain defender, Jim Bentley.

Watching Bentley in action offered a stark reminder why I was never destined to play football to any kind of standard. The thought of going toe to toe with him in the teeming rain on a freezing January afternoon would literally send a shiver down my spine.

There were others who stood out. Notably Ray Warburton – another crunching centre-half at Aldershot Town – was the consummate professional. Three players rolled into one, Warburton could read a game like he had written it himself, and was the perfect mentor for many younger players around him as the Shots made back-to-back play-off appearances in the 2003/04 and 2004/5 seasons.

But Bentley was my ultimate leader, the key cog in Morecambe’s push to get back into the Football League. He had the better of so many opposing strikers before a game had even started.

For clubs with promotion aspirations – like those mentioned above – having a player of Bentley’s calibre is an absolute must, and often at this level, a player that money just can’t buy.