Saturday Spotlight: Maddison's biggest battle

"I'll never forget that day," says Neil Maddison. "Me mam and dad took us to Darlington station and I was in tears. I was 16 and it was the first time I had left home.

"Alan Shearer was on the train and his eyes were all red because he didn't want to leave."

Maddison, currently captain of Darlington, puffs out his cheeks. "It was tough going."

They were both bound for Southampton, where both would make an immediate impact: Newcastle-born Shearer with a hat-trick on his debut; Darlington-born Maddison with goals on his full debuts both home and away.

In fact, Maddison was the one who at that stage was thought most likely to succeed.

"He was the smallest lad on the pitch but he got real height; very determined, marvellous attitude," recalled Jack Robson, the Southampton scout who spotted him when he was 12.

Maddison had represented his schools, Dodmire Junior and Hummersknott Comprehensive - "I will always picture me nan Ethel with her big woolly hat on and her flasks; from schooldays she's the one who springs to mind as she never missed a match".

It was while playing for Darlington schoolboys on Abbey Road playing fields that he was noticed by Robson, who worked with his cousin Jack Hixon - the man who found Shearer.

"I don't think I could have done anything else except football," says Maddison, his 20-month-old daughter Elle asleep in his arms. "Football's my life. I wasn't the best at school, my favourite lesson was PE - I was sport mad. Even now at 34 my whole aim is to get a contract at Darlington for next season."

On the widescreen TV in front of him at his home in Middleton St George is Sky Sports News, and he's following intently the saga of Paul Robinson's on/off transfer to Spurs and Jon Stead's possible move from Huddersfield to Blackburn.

"That'll be great for us," says Maddison. "We played them on Boxing Day at the Reynolds Arena, lost 1-0, and he was a class above." Darlington play Huddersfield today and, following the £1m transfer, will find someone else in Jon's stead.

From Abbey Road, Maddison went to Gateshead Stadium where Southampton held training sessions and, on his 14th birthday, the Saints signed him as an apprentice.

"Newcastle got a whiff, and I went up to a training session with Keegan, Beardsley, Waddle and a few others - Gazza - and I got all their autographs," he remembers.

"In fact, me mam's still got the card with a rosette on it and all their names.

"They tried to persuade me to sign but Southampton went out of their way to make me feel wanted. It was a long, long way but my head and heart said Southampton were the club and so I signed. So did Shearer."

At 16, the pair left school and that summer took the train to Southampton Central, and ended up sharing digs for four years.

"It was in Shearer's second season as an apprentice that he took off. He scored 67 goals in the youth team and a lot of people noticed," says Maddison. An injury crisis meant the young striker got an early run-out in the first team.

"I was with the youth team, away to Crystal Palace, morning kick-off, and we got back on the coach with the radio on, and he stuck a hat-trick in against Arsenal, Tony Adams and all," says Maddison.

"I'll always remember going back to the digs and he's got the ball there in his hands and from that day on it was unbelievable, the house was swarming with press."

Maddison's debut came six months later as substitute in the Littlewoods Cup against Spurs.

"I was playing alongside Jimmy Case and he looked after me really well.

"Gazza gave me so much stick, 'come on little boy, listen to your uncle Jimmy' just to wind me up," recalls Maddison. "We won 2-1, and I wanted to shake Gazza's hand but he wouldn't because he was so gutted they'd lost."

Next week, December 1988, Maddison made his full debut at Plough Lane against Wimbledon. "Jones, Fashanu, Wise, it was a crazy gang," he says.

"I remember once we played them and I went into a tackle with Vinnie Jones and I caught him, just an accident, and within two seconds I was surrounded. Jones was saying he was going to break my leg in the next challenge and Fashanu was saying he was going to snap me in half.

"But I scored on my debut. I'll never forget the feeling of that goal."

He scored the next week, too, at home to Nottingham Forest and so travelled to Newcastle on a real roll expecting to make his third start.

His mum Brenda and dad Bob, along with his two brothers and the rest of the family - "there's Maddisons all over the place", said Brenda at the time - were in the crowd at St James' Park.

"But Chris Nicholl left me out, and I was gutted. I look back now and can understand he was trying to protect me, but I thought it might be my only chance because you never know what happens in football.

"It wasn't. I was there the next season and scored another header and we won 2-1 when Matt le Tissier stuck a 25-yard free kick in the top corner. That made up for it."

The tales tumble from Maddison's lips as he sits in his favourite armchair, television on, comfy moccasins on his feet, the number 22 on his chest obscured by Elle's blonde hair, which he tenderly strokes as she sleeps.

Then he shifts uncomfortably. We've come to the injury. He'd been best man at Shearer's wedding, but now the striker was moving on for millions of pounds to either Manchester United or Blackburn Rovers, while Maddo was on his back in a hospital bed.

"I was playing a reserve game against Norwich City and this lad cleaned us right out," he says.

It was his knee - a problem that may have dated back to Longfield School in Darlington, where on a raised manhole cover on the pitch "my knee scraped like butter and I needed 25 stitches".

At Southampton, after three operations and nearly two years out, he still couldn't kick a ball without excruciating pain.

"The doctor said 'right, I'm going through your whole knee and if you wake up and your leg's in plaster from your groin to your toe it's bad news'," says Maddison.

"So I wakes up, my leg's up there, there's plaster from here to here, and I thought that's it, my career's over. I was devastated."

He was 22. Youth team coach Dave Merrington - "one of the most influential people on my career apart from mum and dad" - encouraged him to persevere.

"There was nothing else for me so I had to go on," he says. "There was only football." He got himself fit for the penultimate game of the 1991-92 season.

"I remember we played Derby away, my first game back, and we got stuffed 6-1 but I played quite well. If it wasn't for that game, which gave me the belief I could still do it, I think I would have packed in."

His memory's not quite correct: the stuffing was only 6-2, but the point is the same.

"I look at Clark Keltie now and I see myself," he continues. "He's gone through a hell of a lot, operation after operation on both knees, training by himself, thinking about packing in, and I really, really hope he makes it. It's a long road and you've got to be strong mentally as well as physically to cope with those injuries."

His experiences at Southampton make him believe Darlington can escape relegation.

"On three or four occasions, our survival went down to the last day of the season," he says. "In 1993-94, we were nine points adrift at Christmas and still finished fourth from bottom - ten games, seven wins, three draws. It came down to the last game of the season away at West Ham.

"We were winning 3-1 (two goals from Le Tissier, one from Maddison himself), they bring it back to 3-2 and there was a pitch invasion and the ref took us off. We had to come back to play the last 1 minutes and Ken Monkou scored an own goal, 3-3, and so our fate depended on the Sheffield Wednesday/Manchester City game."

That too ended in a draw. Southampton stayed up; City went down.

"You've got to start winning games," says Maddison. "Manchester United and Arsenal know they are not going to get beat. Once you get that feeling, it's hard for teams to beat you.

"We have dominated most of the games we have lost 1-0, but we just couldn't score.

"But on Saturday we got the goal and I think it will take us on to better things."