THE starry-eyed teenager who made half a dozen top level appearances for eventual league champions Everton had to wait a long time for his share of that distant glory.

But Warren Aspinall was nonetheless delighted when his contribution to the Toffees achievement in 1986-87 was finally recognised with a medal more than 30 years later.

That’s happened since I last featured Aspinall in this blog, which recalled his early days at hometown club Wigan Athletic and darker days after he had ended his playing days in the blue and white stripes of the Albion (three goals in 24 starts plus 13 as sub) in the 1999-2000 season.

Aspinall is now more often heard rather than seen by Brighton supporters who listen to match commentaries on Radio Sussex, and it was commentator Johnny Cantor, who the summariser sits alongside for the regional BBC radio station’s coverage of all Albion’s games, who instigated a presentation of the belated honour.

“It was JC who pushed it forward and he kept it to himself before surprising me with the news that Everton would be making a presentation,” Aspinall told the matchday programme. “I was shocked but absolutely over the moon.”

The number of games to qualify for a winners’ medal used to be 14, or a third of the season, but the EFL in 2021 decided retrospectively to fall in line with the Premier League which awards medals to players who’ve made a minimum of five appearances.

Aspinall had been unaware of the rule change but Cantor had words in the right places and when Albion played at Goodison Park on 3 January 2023, the former player was finally presented with his medal by Graeme Sharp, one of his fellow Everton forwards back in the day who subsequently became an Everton director.

It’s probably a good job the presentation was made before the game because Albion romped to a 4-1 win that day with goals from Karou Mitoma, full debut-making Evan Ferguson, Solly March and Pascal Gross.

“The medal means the world to me and my family and it now sits proudly on my mantelpiece along with my England under 20 caps,” said Aspinall.

He earned the first of those two caps in the same month that Everton paid £125,000 to sign the 18-year-old from Wigan Athletic, although he saw out the season on loan with the Latics.

He featured in Young England’s 2-0 win over the Republic of Ireland at Elland Road, Leeds, and the following month was in the side that suffered a 4-1 defeat to Scotland at Aberdeen’s Pittodrie ground. Tottenham’s David Howells and Neil Ruddock, then of Millwall, also played in both matches, as did Millwall goalkeeper Brian Horne.

On his return to Goodison Park at the end of the 1985-86 season, Aspinall was on the bench for the last league game (Kendall rested several players because it was five days before the FA Cup Final, which Everton lost 3-1 to Liverpool) and he made his debut in the 3-1 home win over West Ham when going on for two-goal Gary Lineker, who was playing his last league game for Everton before joining Barcelona.

Everton finished as league runners up that season but they went one better the following season, when competition for forward places saw manager Howard Kendall able to pick Sharp and Adrian Heath as his preferred pair, with Paul Wilkinson and Ian Marshall as alternatives. It meant Aspinall’s playing contributions came in the form of nine league and cup appearances as a substitute (he was also a non-playing sub on four occasions). Although first team chances were limited, he bagged plenty of goals for the club’s reserve side, netting 21 in 23 games.

That was enough to convince former Celtic stalwart Billy McNeill, in charge of relegation-bound Aston Villa, to splash £300,000 to take him to Villa Park – where competition for a starting spot was again daunting, with Andy Gray, Gary Shaw, Simon Stainrod and Garry Thompson all striker options.

Aspinall made his Villa debut on 21 February 1987 in a 2-2 draw at home to Liverpool and by the season’s end, while his former Everton teammates were lifting the league trophy, he was part of a Villa side that was bottom of the pile.

McNeill was duly sacked and the picture changed the following season when Aspinall was joint top-scorer as Graham Taylor’s Villa bounced straight back to the top tier as runners up behind Millwall.

“Garry Thompson and I hit it off up front and we had such a good understanding that we kept Alan McInally out of the team for a long time,” he told Villa supporter Colin Abbott. “Garry was good to play alongside because he was like a battering ram and I fed off him.”

Aspinall made his 50th and final appearance for Villa on 7 May 1988 in a 0-0 draw away to Swindon (playing left back for Villa was Bernie Gallacher and in the opposition line-up was Colin Calderwood and Kieran O’Regan).

Already warned by Taylor that he needed to improve ill discipline that had resulted in too many cautions, Aspinall got himself sent off for stamping in a pre-season friendly against St Mirren and Taylor transfer-listed him.

England World Cup winner Alan Ball, in charge at recently relegated Portsmouth, seized the moment and took him to Fratton Park for a fee of £315,000 in August 1988, where his teammates included Mark Chamberlain and Terry Connor. In six years with Pompey, Aspinall also played under John Gregory, Frank Burrows, caretaker Tony Barton and Jim Smith.

Briefer stays followed along the coast at Bournemouth (loan and permanent), Swansea City (loan) and two seasons at Carlisle United.

Keen to return to the south, Micky Adams first signed him when he had taken over as manager at Brentford and he made 48 appearances (plus three as sub) for the Bees but Aspinall then went on loan and then permanently to Colchester United for nine months before Adams brought him on loan and then permanently to the Albion in the autumn of 1999. It was a part exchange for midfielder Andy Arnott.

In only his third game, Aspinall was a delighted scorer of the only goal on his old stomping ground of Brunton Park as Albion returned to Sussex with all the points. The News of the World said: “Former Carlisle favourite Warren Aspinall seized on Billy Barr’s poor back pass to chip keeper Andy Dibble.”

In the Argus, Andy Naylor wrote: “The colourful midfielder then dashed towards the Albion supporters huddled in the seats on a drizzly day in Cumbria before sliding full-length on the greasy turf.”

Aspinall continued his celebration with a finger-on-lip gesture and an ear cupped towards the home support. He told the matchday programme: “I heard the keeper shout for the ball and anticipated the defender’s pass. I think I showed a great turn of pace for a veteran.”

In fact, Aspinall was 32 when he joined the Seagulls and he added experience to a side that went on to finish its first season back in Brighton in 11^th place in the fourth tier

At the start of the following season, when he went on as a sub for Gary Hart in Brighton’s home 2-1 win over Rochdale (Bobby Zamora scored both Albion goals), it was to be his last ever appearance.

Suffering from the niggle of a piece of floating bone in his right ankle, he followed physio advice to have it removed in what was expected to be a routine operation. But while in hospital, he caught the MSRA superbug which ate away tendons and ligaments in his ankle.

“They eventually said I would never play football again as a result. I was finished,” he told The News, Portsmouth, in a graphic account of the trauma. “Yet now I needed an operation to get rid of this infection, which involved me scheduled to stay on a hospital ward for 14 days, attached to an intravenous drip while antibiotics were fed into my body.

“After 13 days, my body broke out in a rash from head to toe. It had rejected the drug. So, I had the operation once more – and it happened again. After 13 days, my body rejected it.

“For 28 days I’d been on that hospital ward, so I was then offered the chance to return home if I underwent an operation to insert two tubes into my heart, one for the intravenous drip to enter and the other to take blood out.

“That sounded good to me – apart from my heart subsequently stopping during the procedure. I died. I’m told it was for a few seconds, but I died on that operating table,’ Aspinall told The News. “But they brought me back, and I was allowed to go home to Hedge End, with a district nurse checking on me every day, even Christmas Day.

“There were two six-inch tubes hanging out of my chest, with the nurse taking blood out of one and putting the drugs into the other.

“I lived. The antibiotics killed the superbug, but my career ended there and then. I was aged 33, with nothing planned, no coaching badges. I had to go into the real world.”

The story of what happened in his post-playing days – battles against gambling and alcohol addictions – have been well documented in various media interviews, including a detailed one with the Birmingham Mail in October 2012, when he spoke openly about a near-miss suicide attempt.

He has been Cantor’s co-commentator on Albion matches for Radio Sussex since 2015.