Alan Kelly first clapped eyes on Jordan Pickford when the goalkeeper’s loan team Carlisle United were being put to the sword by Preston North End.
It says something for Pickford’s class and substance, then, that Kelly’s keeper’s intuition told him he was watching a “special” footballer.
Indeed, off the back of that single viewing Kelly, then goalkeeper coach with Preston, resolved to bring the young Wearsider to Deepdale.
More than 12 months later Preston snared their man – on a temporary deal from Sunderland – and Kelly, now a key figure on David Unsworth’s Everton Under-23s staff, encountered a man passionate about his job and “determined to improve every day”.