Heard the one about the field, the horse and former West Bromwich Albion owner Jeremy Peace? No?



Well, allow Darren Eales — the man who has appeared in court as a barrister, helped negotiate a world-record transfer and built a title-winning football club from the ground up — to tell you all about it.



“I got called in to Jeremy’s office and when he had driven into work, he’d seen a horse on a field we owned next to the training ground,” says Eales, who spent five seasons at Albion as legal counsel and club secretary. “So this became a top priority. I had to look into who owned it and how we could get it off the premises. Animal law and pasture rights are quite convoluted, so it became one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had.



“Whenever we had a board meeting, I would have under my bullet points: ‘horse in the field’. I used to think, ‘Wow, here I am in the excitement of West Brom, dealing...