🎧 Having a party - the rise of Vardy
With the Jamie Vardy party at Leicester City now over, the striker's remarkable journey to becoming the greatest Foxes goalscorer of all time has been chronicled by BBC Radio Leicester.Former winger Marc Albrighton, who won the Premier League title and lifted the FA Cup alongside the England forward, joins Leicester City commentator Owynn Palmer-Atkin in hosting the five-part series.Episode one starts at the beginning of Vardy's remarkable football journey and the disappointment of being released by boyhood club Sheffield Wednesday as a teenager.His time playing for a college team after that was followed by a life-shaping spell at Stocksbridge Park Steels – where he played for six months with an electronic tag on his ankle after being convicted of assault.A 6:00pm curfew that was also imposed on Vardy meant the first two occasions that Neil Aspin went to try watch the forward during his time as Halifax boss, he wasn't there because both matches were evening kick-offs."From first seeing him, I knew he was a player we had to sign," Aspin said.It cost the West Yorkshire club £15,000 to get a player that would go on to score 145 Premier League goals and net seven times in 26 internationals for England.Aspin also tells the story of Vardy coming close to scoring a hat-trick of hat-tricks in one week of his one season with Halifax, which earned him a move to then non-league side Fleetwood Town.It was his golden-boot winning exploits with the Cod Army, which helped them win promotion to the English Football League for the first time in 2011-12, that made Vardy the first non-league player to cost £1m when he then joined Championship club Leicester.Steve Walsh, Leicester City's former head of recruitment, talks about how they landed the future star's signature when Southampton had also been "in for him".
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