Exclusive: Jason Puncheon reflects on his meteoric rise to the Premier League

Croydon-born Jason Puncheon revelling at Crystal Palace

JASON PUNCHEON has taken the long route to Premier League fame. In fact, football looked a long way off more than once in his career.

 

So when last May the boy from Croydon stood on the Anfield turf having helped Crystal Palace wreck the great Steven Gerrard's grand farewell to his adoring fans by beating Liverpool 3-1 and said to the England legend, "Thanks for being on the same pitch as me," he meant it.

Because Puncheon was very nearly not on a pitch at all at several points in his career. He has had to work his way up through every division to get to a Palace team that, today, stand sixth in the Premier League as they prepare to face his old team Southampton at Selhurst Park.

It is a team with the potential to be the best that Eagles fans have seen in maybe 25 years.

 

"You grow up and idolise these people - I saw Gerrard scoring screamers every week, dominating the Premier League, it drives you on," says Puncheon, 29.

"He was a local lad playing for his club. To know that local lads can come through and play for their clubs was a massive driving force.

"I couldn't imagine playing against him when I was playing at places like Lewes. But I always thought I'd play in the Premier League. You look from the outside and it looks difficult. When you're in it, you have to grasp it and ask yourself, 'can I go toe to toe with these people'?"

Puncheon has more than proved it to himself since his arrival at Palace, initially on loan from Southampton and then permanently in January 2014, since when he has become a lynchpin of Alan Pardew's steadily improving side.

But it almost failed to happen at all. After breaking through the ranks at Wimbledon as the club morphed into MK Dons, Puncheon went off the rails after being released in 2009 and there followed nine months of wandering in non-League at clubs like Lewes and Fisher Athletic, hanging out with the wrong kind of people - and problems with the police - before Paul Fairclough gave him a chance at Barnet.

Then came an unhappy spell at Plymouth, before Pardew took him to Southampton. He even managed to fall out with owner Nicola Cortese there but smoothed things over and now regards his four years there as seminal to his career.

Puncheon idolised Steven Gerrard growing up but got to share a pitch with him last year

Alan Pardew is a big admirer of the Palace winger

But then Palace called and he came home. And that, he says, was the key all along. He just missed home. Missed Croydon.

"It was difficult, living away from home in Milton Keynes," says Puncheon, a junior at Palace before moving to Wimbledon.

"I fell out with the manager, I was out of football for nine months and up to no good. But friends stood by me.

"I went to a trial at Barnet and Paul Fairclough gave me the platform to play. Sometimes with young kids, that's what you have to do. I see it with Wilfried Zaha here, the more he plays, the more he gets it.



Puncheon was playing for Barnet in League Two in 2008

"That's why I talk to the young lads here. I can relate to them. I grew up around here, I know how hard it is. Some of those kids have had very hard upbringings."

The key was, while playing at League Two Barnet, he could still live on his home patch, even at one point with his grandmother, right behind the Holmesdale End at Selhurst. "Sometimes you just miss home," he says. "As you get older, you realise you have to get on with it. But not when you are young.

"But I have learned a lot. I would not want to change the way I got here. It was good for me. The gaffer here, Alan Pardew, signed me from Plymouth for Southampton, and said to me, 'Concentrate. Prepare'. I was 23 or 24. You don't realise the significance but as you get older, it dawns on you.

"I always knew that I would come back to Palace though. The club has only gone forward since I've come here and I'm glad to be a part of it."

But Puncheon warned that, to fulfil their potential, this Palace team must at least equal the feats of the 1990 side and his idol Ian Wright, who reached the FA Cup final. "We have such a strong core here," says Puncheon. "But we have to achieve something. Maybe getting into Europe, an FA Cup final. It would be a letdown of the ability this team has if we don't."

Puncheon has helped Palace impress in the Premier League this season