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Unbelievably, it’s 30 years since I joined Boro.

And, if you’d said to me when I was a wee kiddie that I would spend more than half my life living in England I would never have believed it.

The chances are if I hadn’t joined Boro back in 1985 I would still be up in Glasgow and maybe on the dole... who knows?

I’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of my arrival at Boro tomorrow night with a dinner in the Legends Lounge at the Riverside Stadium.

Joining me will be 10 pals I’ve got to know over the years either through football or media work including David Hodgson, Curtis Fleming, Graeme Kavanagh, Steve Vickers, Craig Hignett and Malcolm Macdonald.

It should be a cracking night and I can’t wait to see everybody.

My old mate Tony Mowbray was also due to attend but he’s had to pull out due to club commitments with Coventry.

Mogga has sent his best wishes ahead of the dinner and I’m delighted to see the Sky Blues have won their last two League One fixtures under his management.

Hopefully City will avoid relegation and Tony will get a long-term contract at the end of the season.

There will be plenty of Boro reminiscences tomorrow night but I don’t mind revealing now that I achieved my ambitions with the club.

I played in the top flight, I played at Wembley, I represented my county, I won promotion, there was rarely a dull moment.

And yet, it could have all been so different.

In the summer of 1985 I’d fallen out with my club Albion Rovers and was banned from the training ground.

I’d been a part-time footballer with Rovers and trained two night’s a week while also holding down a job as a gardener for Glasgow Corporation.

I wanted to play at a higher level and believed in my own ability. After all, I had finished the previous season as Scotland’s top scorer in league football.

Then a local reporter called Andrew Gold came up with the idea of writing to clubs in England’s top two division and in the Scottish top flight asking for a trial.

I didn’t want to do it but one day he called around to my parents’ house with the letter and said all I had to do was sign it. I’m glad I did.

Boro were the first club to respond and they offered me a trial.

I have to admit, I wasn’t sure about going down, I didn’t really know much about Middlesbrough.

Then my mother told me that she’d bumped into Bobby Murdoch’s mother at church and she’d told her that Bobby raved about Teesside saying how warm and lovely the people were.

That swung it as much as anything did, especially as Bobby Murdoch was a Celtic legend and I was a huge Celtic supporter! He was also my dad’s favourite player.

Arriving at Middlesbrough, the first person I met on leaving the station was the Gazette’s Boro writer Eric Paylor. He said he was banned at the time by the club but asked if he could interview me for the paper.

It was the first of countless chats and we’ve become firm friends.

I can remember clearly the first time I was on the team bus at Boro because it was full of young lads like Gary Pallister, Colin Cooper, Tony Mowbray and Gary Parkinson,

I had a trial, a reserve game, and it didn’t go too well. We were playing Grimsby and the score was 0-0. I had a couple of shots but it was nothing to write home about from my point of view.

I wasn’t keen on staying down for another game and, because they wanted me to stay for a month, I was worried I would lose my job.

Back in Scotland I rang Boro to speak to manager Willie Maddren but got through to his answer phone – it was the first time I’d ever had to leave a message on one – and I told him I wouldn’t be going back.

The club’s scout Barry Geldart, who offered me the trial in the first place, rang me and said I could come back down for one more game and see how it went from there.

That turned out to be against Bradford and we won 4-2 with me scoring twice and setting up two for Archie Stevens.

On the back of that I was offered a two year contract with an option of two more years and the rest is history.

In addition to tomorrow night’s dinner I’ll be launching my new book early next season.

Without giving too much away I’m going to be revealing many of the highs and lows I’ve experienced over the past 30 years.

There’s still time to get hold of a ticket for tomorrow night’s dinner (start 6.30pm for 7).

To book, visit www.bernieslaven.co.uk or email seven.enterprises@hotmail.co.uk.