From the archive - a dream debut in the derby
Imagine being a Brummie (some will struggle to think of anything worse, but go on, give it a try).
Then imagine being a non-league footballer plucked from obscurity to play for Wolves, a dream move.
And then envisage that it's your league debut, at St Andrew's, live on telly, and you score a hat-trick.
Far-fetched enough? Well how about being a Villa fan as well?
This was a script that the makers of Roy of the Rovers would turn down for being too outlandish.
But for Darren Roberts it wasn't a dream, it actually happened.
"It's not happening is it?" Roberts said, immediately after his incredible heroics had given Graham Turner's Wolves a startling 4-0 win against Birmingham in 1992.
"I'm waiting for someone to tell me this is a dream. My league debut, a derby match, and a hat-trick against Blues...and I'm a Villa fan as well!"
The striker had joined from non-league Burton five months earlier for just £20,000 and, with Steve Bull and Andy Mutch the well-established front pairing of choice, his immediate first-team prospects were limited.
But with Mutch injured, Roberts was handed the opportunity of a lifetime on a Sunday afternoon in September. It was Mutch himself who delivered the bombshell with a quiet word at lunchtime, telling Roberts: "You're in."
Turner soon confirmed the news and Roberts was in the team.
"The only nerves came when Gary Newbon told me at the end of the game he wanted to interview me. I didn't know what to say."
Roberts didn't take long to make his mark, heading Wolves in front from a Kevin Ashley throw in the 14th minute.
Six minutes before half-time, he doubled the lead after Bull had pressured a Blues defender into a mistake.
Keith Downing then scored past a shell-shocked Blues defence to make it 3-0.
And before the oranges were served, Roberts completed an astonishing first-half hat-trick, another header.
A no doubt bewildered and floating Roberts was withdrawn after 70 minute, his indelible mark in Wolves' history having been made.
"I've been expecting somebody to hit me and tell me it was all a dream," he said a few days later. "I've watched the full match on video three times this week and I still can't believe it's true."
No wonder he couldn't believe it – Roberts' previous hat-trick had come for Armitage in the Walsall Senior Cup.
He kept the match ball and man-of-the-match champagne as lasting souvenirs of his logic-defying debut, which was to be the undoubted highlight of a career which soon saw him move back down the leagues again.
As David Instone wrote in the Express & Star at the time: "He might just go on to out-score Steve Bull one season in the future or even help Wolves to Wembley, but the chances are that Darren Roberts will be remembered in decades to come as the player who scored a hat-trick in the first half of his full Football League debut."
That he is. And, for a Villa fan, what a thing to be remembered for.
