Frank Worrall - Jamie Vardy--The Boy from Nowhere: The True Story of the Genius Behind Leicester Citys 5000-1 Winning Season

T he day is 11 January, 1987, and the Steel City is blanketed with snow. The locals shiver as they try to shovel up to eleven inches of the white stuff away from their front doors and driveways. Most dont bother, deciding to take the polices advice on the Radio Hallam breakfast show and stay at home for the day. Its an excuse to miss work you cant get in if youre snowed up and its an excuse to miss a day in the classroom, since all the schools are shut for the day anyway. Its like being in bloody Russia! one plucky old-timer jokes as he manages to make it to the corner shop to stock up on milk and bread. Some arent so lucky and have to go without, as the city struggles through one of the worst winters in its history. The whiteout would claim eight lives and the Northern General Hospital would be overrun with accident victims.

Temperatures drop to minus 5.4 degrees Celsius the lowest for more than one hundred years and the big freeze shows no sign of easing. Into this unforgiving scene in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, on this particularly harsh winters day, the footballer who would become the biggest name of the 201516 season is welcomed into the world.

To some, he would one day become a footballing messiah of the North.

But to his happy mum and dad on that white winters day, he was simply Our Jamie.

Jamie Vardy was born James Richard Gill to dad Richard Gill, aged twenty-four, and mum Lisa Clewes, who was eighteen. Lisa would change her sons name when Richard walked out on them after getting another woman pregnant. Labourer Richard would later tell The Mail on Sunday, It is a real shame that things did not turn out differently. But his mother and I were really young and I completely lost touch with them after we broke up. Jamie was a cute baby I used to feed him and change him and push him out in the pram but her parents did not approve of me and I spent most of my time in the attic. He was still in nappies when I left. I saw Lisa a few times shopping with her mother but Mavis just walked off, telling Lisa to ignore me. I knew she had changed his surname.

Jamie was brought up by Lisa and stepfather Philip Vardy, whom Lisa married and whose surname she and Jamie took. It was Philip he would call Dad as he grew up in the shadows of Sheffield Wednesdays ground, Hillsborough. His upbringing would be steady and happy and Jamie was football-mad from the day he first kicked a ball. He would spend hours out in the street and the park playing the game with pals as they used jumpers for goalposts. He always wanted to be a footballer and at school told teachers that he would make it and play for Sheffield Wednesday, the club he supported and loved.

It looked like that was more than just a youthful pipe dream as he signed to the club as a youngster and impressed those in charge during youth team matches. But at the age of fifteen he was left distraught when the club showed him the door, telling him he was too small to make it as a professional.

When I got released by Sheffield Wednesday, the club Id supported all my life, it made me think football wasnt for me, he would later say. As soon as that happened I never thought I would play football again. It was a real heartache as a kid. The reason I got released was I was too small. I wasnt physically built enough. It does hit you hard. I was very angry and upset.

Indeed, he was so angry and upset that he turned his back on the game. He went to college but the football bug took a hold again when he was seventeen and a pal pleaded with him to start playing again. Jamie explained, He got me playing for his Sunday league side, Wickersley Youth, but you can imagine what that was like. The refs let you get away with murder. There were two-footed, knee-high tackles coming in at you and, to be honest, youd rather not be going near the ball in games like that.

Despite that, he started to make a name for himself in amateur football in Sheffield, and Stocksbridge Park Steels signed him in 2003. Steve Adams, then the clubs youth team manager, told Sky Sports, We played a cup game against Wickersley. They had a striker who was busy and fast, and I said to my assistant, I wouldnt mind that lad in our team. It wasnt easy getting him [Jamie] to Stocksbridge, as he was showing his loyalty to his pal he was playing alongside at Wickersley.

But Steve did persuade him to join the club. Dad Philip went with Jamie for a talk with Steve, and after twenty minutes he had agreed to sign. Jamie said, It was getting back to enjoying football and I kicked on from there.

Yet he would spend four seasons in the reserves before finally getting his first-team chance. Club chairman Allen Bethel invited Gary Marrow, the first-team manager, to take a look at Vardy, and Marrow said he knew immediately that Jamie was good enough to play for the first eleven. Marrow knew that Jamie was a natural talent after watching him in training and in a five-a-side session, while Bethel had recommended him after being impressed with the young players speed and energy.

Jamie earned just 30 a week in the first team at Stocksbridge, which wasnt enough to live on. So he also worked full-time as a technician at a factory that made medical splints. His job involved producing carbon-fibre splints that helped disabled people who had a condition called drop foot to walk naturally. He described the work as rewarding but admitted that it was difficult to fit in playing football around it. Often exhausted, he would put in a full weeks effort at the factory and then play a game on a Tuesday or a Saturday for Stocksbridge.