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| Vardy is fast becoming the Premier League's hottest property |
AT just before 5.30pm on Saturday, a wiry figure in a blue shirt will walk out under the gaze of more than 30,000 people at Leicester's King Power Stadium with the majority wanting him to become a modern day goal-scoring icon.
Should he achieve it and eclipse the Premier League record of 10 goals in 10 games he now shares with Manchester's United Ruud van Nistelrooy, Jamie Vardy will complete an amazing journey.
A decade ago, he was regularly singled out as the focus for a different kind of attention. Back then, he was playing for the second team of Stocksbridge Park Steels, a club seven miles away from Sheffield and borne from the foundations of the works teams from a local British Steel plant.
Oppositions tried to stop him by any means at their disposal.
Allen Bethel, the Stocksbridge chairman, this week remembered the day Vardy, still just 18, was pitched into a Cup Final.
"Jamie had run them absolutely ragged in the first half and I was just popping over the ground for a cuppa when I heard their half-time team talk," said Bethel.
"They were men 10 years and more his senior and they finished it by saying, 'kick him, stop him, just kill the b******!'"
In the second half, Vardy was kicked "up hill and down dale" but, as Bethel said: "He got a terrible hiding from them but not once in that 45 minutes did he kick out, complain or look over at the bench to be substituted.
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| Vardy's life may have changed since his Fleetwood days, but not his tenacity |
"Most 18-year-olds would have been cowed by that, especially one as slight as him, but he just got his head down and ran them ragged. We won comfortably. You could tell right then that he had something special about him."
Vardy, now 28, has confounded the doubters at every turn from the moment he was rejected by Sheffield Wednesday at 16 for being too small to the moment last May when he first pulled on an England shirt.
While his story may look like one of effortless progression, the reality is one of hard work and a constant battle against those who believe that there is only one route to the the top and it is through a modern Premier League club academy.
After the rejection at 16, Vardy found himself working in a carbon-fibre splint factory putting in 12-hour shifts. It was a period that gave him perspective, forged friendships as well as strained his back.
It also led him to seven years playing for Stocksbridge for £30 a week. In the end, it was the making of him, give or take a scrape or two. In 2007, he was in a spot of bother 'defending' a mate outside a pub which led to a criminal conviction for assault.
"He did not start the fight but he ended it," is how it is described by Bethel.
It led to him playing in a tag for six months and rushing to impress on the pitch in the 60 minutes before he had to be home to comply with the his curfew of 6pm.
It was around that time that the first of the scouts started to come to watch.
Their glowing reports gave him moves to Halifax in 2010 for £15,000, Fleetwood in 2011 for £250,000 and then Leicester in 2012 for a record fee for a non-League player of £1million, rising to £1.5m.
He was not done there and with Leicester he won promotion to the Premier League and eventually England recognition.
He has become the most-talked about player this season but throughout this rise to the top he has remained the same player.
"Nothing changes in his style," said Bethel. "There was a moment in the Newcastle game recently where he is all arms and legs and shoulders and shoves a big defender [Chancel Mbemba] off the ball. It could have been playing on a muddy pitch at Bracken Moor Lane [Stockbridge's home ground]. He has never changed."
Vardy uses that non-League foundation well. There is not a full-back or centre-half who will intimidate him physically nor many capable of bettering him over 50 yards or 90 minutes.
When he signed for Fleetwood from non-League Halifax, many of the squad questioned why they had splashed so much scarce cash on this newcomer. After the first training session when he left them for dead on the bleep tests, they knew.
Andy Mangan was his strike partner at Fleetwood. Between them they scored 58 goals, went 29 games unbeaten and won the league with 103 points and two matches to spare.
"One thing I know is that if we wouldn't have had Jamie Vardy that year there is not a chance we would have won that league," said Mangan. "I scored 24 and he scored 34 and set up most of mine but the biggest thing you can say about him, the biggest inspiration, is that he fears nothing.
"He could play against John Terry or whoever - he doesn't care. He just goes out there and plays his football."
Leicester begin the day top of the Premier League and are facing Manchester United, who start it in second. One more goal will not only pass the mark of 10 games set by Van Nistelrooy either side of his summer break from March to August in 2003 but make hundreds of defenders from the tip to the very base of football's pyramid feel a little bit better about themselves.
If he achieves it, Vardy will then be one away from Jimmy Dunne's top-flight record from 1931-32 where he scored 12 goals in successive matches for Sheffield United. For a Wednesday fan, beating that record would be just perfect.
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