Who was the first man to score a Premier League goal?
Brian Deane is the correct answer to that oft-asked pub quiz question, doing so against Manchester United in August 1992 for Sheffield United.
It was a different era and as a new Premier League season begins, football of that era sadly feels far removed from the impersonal glitz and glamour that we're used to nowadays.
Deane feels quite similarly as we got into when he joined Joe Coffey, Derek Ryan, Killian Woods and I for an in-depth chat on this week's Newstalk's Team 33 about his playing career and early foray into management - a foray that saw him have to go abroad to put his foot on the ladder.
You can listen to the full interview on the podcast player just below or stream for free on iTunes:
On the coaching side, there has been a growing debate about whether racism is preventing more black managers from getting jobs and Deane gave his own personal take on that argument as well as explaining why he chose to start his managerial career in Norway rather than in England. We also chatted about the time he kept minnows Sarpsborg up in the top flight and why he locked himself in the dressing room after achieving that feat.
He also looks back on his playing career with Sheffield United and compared his two spells at Leeds - first with the good years and then in the post-financial implosion period. He was one of a small clutch of English or Irish players to spend time abroad, looking back on why he took the risk to join Graeme Souness' Benfica in the mid-90s.
Deane also shared fond memories about his former strike partners like ex-Portugal forward Nuno Gomes at Benfica and our previous interviewee Leeds cult hero Tony Yeboah and also had one story about Croatian Alen Boksic, who he played alongside during a spell at Middlesbrough...
"When I was at Middlesbrough, I played with Alen Boksic and he was world class as well but I didn't really enjoy playing with Alen because it was hard to kind of communicate with him. He was quite a moody guy and that doesn't always bode well. Sometimes you get foreign players like that who you don't know what they're thinking. It's tough but Tony [Yeboah] was a fantastic player to play with."
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