Matt Jarvis earns England respect
Wednesday 23rd March 2011, 4:00PM GMT.
Wolves winger Matt Jarvis has quickly earned the respect of the England dressing room – by beating his fellow stars at table tennis.
The 24-year-old erased any nerves at meeting the cream of the nation’s footballers by leading the way at ‘ping-pong.’
Little did his new team-mates know that Jarvis has something of a pedigree in the sport, as his parents Nick and Linda were both England internationals and British No 1′s.
But it earned him instant kudos anyway.
Jarvis said: “I’m OK at table tennis. I was a bit rusty on Monday night but I played a couple of games.
“I managed to beat Joe Hart and Michael Dawson – then I dropped it into conversation about my parents and they couldn’t believe it. They thought they were getting hustled.
“The word is out now so I’ll have to improve my game.”
Reaching this stage has been a long journey for Jarvis.
At school he excelled at a number of sports – he was Surrey champion in the 50m and 100m breaststroke as well as the 1,500m on the track, while he also managed one A, four Bs and five C grades at GCSE.
But football was always going to be the winner – even after he was rejected by Millwall as a 16-year-old, three years after his brother, Ben, who underwent three knee operations, missed out through injury.
Stung by his rejection and his brother’s misfortune, Jarvis set about proving people wrong and hasn’t looked back since.
His dad Nick said: “Matthew is very determined. He’s known what he has wanted since the age of eight. As for his schoolwork, he did a lot of it in the car on the way to matches or races.
“Eventually one of the Millwall coaches spoke to Gillingham about Matthew and he went there to train.
“They looked at him and offered him a place on the youth training scheme and when he was 17 they gave him a professional contract. Matthew realised he didn’t want to miss out on being a footballer.
“Ever since then he has tried his hardest to be as good as he can possibly be.”
UK Sport
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