Left-back Tyrone Mings was back in action for the Blues as a late sub at Sheffield Wednesday having been out since suffering a knee injury at Reading on the opening day of the season with manager Mick McCarthy delighted to have the 20-year-old, who will play for the U21s at Millwall today, available again.
"Mings is different class. He’s come back and trained like he hasn’t been away, he’s a fabulous guy,” enthused the Blues boss.
"To play for 70 minutes with a medial ligament injury which puts you out for eight weeks, how do you do that?”
The former Southampton trainee, who has made two Blues starts as well as his brief weekend sub appearance, was signed in December from non-league Chippenham Town, where he had been playing alongside former U18s coach Russell Osman’s son Toby.
McCarthy recalls being immediately impressed with the 6ft 3in tall defender after Osman senior got him in for a trial: "We got the heads-up on him from Russell Osman. I remember I walked through the training ground with Russell chatting about him.
"We walked across, I was talking and he went into one header, a tackle and a pass, all down this side. We hadn’t even got to the pitch and I said ‘I’ll sign him now, just on what I’ve seen’.
"And I remember, later on I took him off. He went into a tackle and some geezer left his foot for him and he kicked right through him, so I took him off. It was after about 70 minutes.
"He came off and he was chewing away. I said ‘What’s up with you?’. He said ‘I don’t want to come off’ and I said ‘I want to sign you, that’s why I’m taking you off. You’re in. You’ve got a knock and I want to sign you’. But he was still grumbling and still didn’t want to come off!”
McCarthy has a history of looking beyond the Football League for players at his previous clubs with a number of them making the grade.
"We’ve done well with them, the Michael Kightlys of this world,” he said, the winger having joined Wolves from Grays Athletic during the Town boss’s time in charge at Molineux.
"We had to pay for some, Dean Whitehead and Liam Lawrence at Sunderland, we got Stephen Ward from Ireland when we were at Wolves.
"Daryl Murphy, we signed him from Waterford when we were at Sunderland for not a lot of money and he’s had a good career. It’s nice when it works, and you’re not gambling too much of the club’s money.”
In addition to Mings, who extended his Town contract until at least 2015 earlier in the season, McCarthy brought in another Waterford United man Jack Doherty and ex-Crawley youngster Jordan Adekunle in the summer, while 19-year-old Kingstonian midfielder Dan Sweeney is currently on trial at Playford Road, hoping to make a similar impression on the Blues boss.