2001-2006: LEYTON ORIENT

It was while I was at Lakeview that I became convinced I could make it as a professional footballer. I took a chance and rang Leyton Orient and told them a bit about myself. They asked me to send in a list of fixtures and one of their scouts came to have a look at me. I did okay and went to the Orient Centre of Excellence.

At first the manager wanted to put me in the B team, but the head of youth development argued my case. I stayed with the youth A side. I´d joined mid way through the season and it was difficult to break through but I kept working hard. After the knock-backs I´d had in the past I was determined to prove myself.

I kept going back week after week. I was getting better all the time. I was studying for my GCSEs so there was a lot of pressure. But the club put my mind at rest when they told me I was safe and I was going to get one of the two scholarships that were available. Orient were great. They looked after me when things were going well but also when things weren´t so good.

Eventually the day came when I was given my first team debut. I was 16. We were 3-0 down at Bournemouth with two minutes to go so there wasn´t a lot of pressure. It wasn´t like I could make things much worse. We didn´t have time to turn it around but we did score while I was on the pitch. I was pleased about that.

It was quite a surreal experience because it was a moment I´d been working towards for so many years. I was on the pitch with players I´d been looking up to for ages and cleaning their boots. I cleaned Carl Hutchings´ boots and looked forward to the little back-hander he gave me at Christmas; now I was playing alongside him. It was quite funny, though: the fans were chanting for me, but they had the wrong name. They thought I was Jabbo Ibhere who had been out! It was a bit unreal.

The following season I started in our 2-2 home draw with York in December and things really started to take off. I became a regular and was picking up more and more experience.

The highlight of my time at Orient was the 2005/06 season when we had a great cup run and won promotion to League One. We drew Fulham in the third round of the FA Cup [check out how pleased I am in the picture above]. I can remember the excitement at playing against a Premiership side. There was no pressure because nobody expected anything from us. We were just glad to be there at that stage.

The lack of pressure meant we played with real freedom. On the day we were the better side. We won 2-1. It was one of the best feelings I´d ever had in football. We all just wanted to go out and celebrate, but we had the league to focus on and had to be quite restrained. We eventually got promotion with a last-minute goal on the last day of the season against Oxford.