Southampton’s decision to call time on Tyrone Mings’s spell with them could return to haunt them this weekend if the Town defender plays his part in an FA Cup shock.

A victory at St Mary’s would take Mick McCarthy and his players into the fourth round of the world’s oldest knockout competition and would rank as quite a feat given the Saints’ current lofty position of fourth in the Premier League.

Mings, who was just 15 when he was told he would not be offered a scholarship and would instead be departing the club, rolled back the years to recall how he was first recruited by a club whose reputation for rearing their own players is almost second to none.

He remembered: “Southampton have a satellite centre in Bath and I lived 20 minutes away from there. Their scouts came and watched me when I was playing for Chippenham — I think I was seven at the time — and I joined their academy when I was eight. I stayed there until the summer of 2009.

“I’m not sure if there were other clubs interested in signing me but Southampton have such a wide scope of scouting in the south west that they are quite often the first to everyone.

“They were the first to approach me and as soon as I knew they were interested I joined up with them. I used to sign a one-year deal every year.

“It’s frightening the number of young players they have produced — Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott and Nathan Dyer trained at Bath University as well.

“They are a few years older than me but we all trained together, even if they were more advanced physically and in terms of technical ability.

“Lloyd James, who is with Leyton Orient, was also there and it was good to be learning there. The production line has been good for a few years now and is obviously continuing.

“Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was in my age group but he was based at Southampton for training and we only caught up once a week when we were playing games.

"There’s only one player there now who was in my age group, Lloyd Isgrove. The others have gone to do other things.”

Most surprising of all, perhaps, was Southampton’s reason for allowing him to move on when they did. Now a strapping 6ft 5ins tall, Mings was told that in their opinion he lacked the physique to make it in the professional game.

He added: “They were playing me as a left-sided central defender or a left-winger — anywhere they could fit me in really. I wasn’t really much of a dominant figure because I was small. I was 15 at the time and I guess I was 5ft 8ins or 5ft 9ins at the time.

“They told me in February that year, before my 16th birthday, that I wasn’t getting a scholarship and I went to Millfield in August that year, by which time I had grown as bit more.

“It was Millfield, I guess, where the growing happened and when I came out of there I joined Yate.”

Mings took news of his impending release on the chin, recalling: “I wasn’t inconsolable or anything like that.

“I think my parents were a lot worse than me. I’m quite a laid-back person and when it came to them telling me I wasn’t going to get a scholarship I just looked for other options.

“I went to Bristol Rovers, I went to Swindon, but the general consensus was that I wasn’t big enough at the time to go and play U18 football. If that was their opinion it was probably the right one.

“A couple of years down the line, and only a couple of months before I came to Ipswich, I went to Hereford. They were under a transfer embargo at the time and couldn’t sign me but I think the manager, Martin Foyle, was quite keen. But everything has worked out well.”

Photo: Action Images

tractordownsouth added 09:38 - Jan 3 Think what that money could have done for Hereford, they went bust because of £200,000 or so debt. If they had signed him they could have easily made that amount from selling him.
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Garv added 13:32 - Jan 3 Very interesting interview. The Mings story is quite an impressive one. Since he played his first game for us he's never looked out of place.
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