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For a while Willo Flood was my favourite player. Yes, I know, I know. But they were dark days.

And consider the alternatives. On the day he made his debut - a 1-0 defeat at Sheffield United - Isaiah Osbourne and Chris Killen were in the team. And Jeremie Aliadiere. Marcus Bent was on the bench. So in my defence for rushing out to print up a ‘I (heart) Willo’ t-shirt, the bar was set fairly low at the time.

The only realistic other option was Barry Robson, a seething symphony in pointing and stomping red-faced recrimination. I preferred the almost playground energy and enthusiasm of the Irishman.

In a soft-centred and demoralised team that was playing no-frills functional football so slowly that at times games felt like they were buffering, Willo ran. And ran. And ran. He was eye-catching because of the perpetual motion he brought to the pitch and the hope it created through sheer kinetic energy.

He dashed urgently about the pitch following the action and snapping at ankles and chasing the ball with the gleeful primal joy of a terrier in Stewart Park, tongue dangling, eyes darting and skinny little legs going like the clappers.

He played with zest and energy and spent most of a game in hot pursuit of the ball. In his early wheel-spinning shows his hurtling around the pitch was totally out of sync with the soul-sapping sterility of the rest of the team. It was cartoonlike as he left little whizz lines and clouds of dust in his wake and zig-zagged around a pedestrian midfield.

OK, the scrawny schemer wasn’t the greatest player ever to pull on the shirt (a shirt incidentally that always looked several sizes too big). He never looked like an artisan, a footballing craftsman with a bulging toolbox of tricks and flicks and deft touches and exquisite passing - but he was certainly ready to put in a shift, to give it a go and to work.

In fact the malnourished midfielder looked like the enthusiastic teenage teaboy on a building site, delighted to be included in the banter and always ready to try his hand at a bit of bricklaying or plastering or driving the little dumper. Especially driving the dumper. With a big smile on his face. Wheeeeeeeee.

He remains the only player I have ever seen get on the end of his own cross. That takes some doing. It is a concept that defies logic and physics and left people laughing and watching in open mouthed amazement.

Admittedly it was more by accident than design. It was late in a 2-1 home win over Barnsley in February 2010 and he went to deliver into the box from the right there was a little bobble. He spooned it and sent the ball screwing high into the air and he darted after it and as it dropped Willo wriggled between two surprised Tyke defenders to slice a volley well wide. It would have been a worldie.

And that was Willo Flood all over: bags of effort and shapeless sparking energy without the polish or poise to finish it off. And if the truth be told, without the physique and innate football intelligence to harness the industry and spirit he had in spades.

He arrived as part of the advance guard of Gordon Strachan’s Great Tartanisation in January 2010 along with fellow Celtic refugees Robson and ‘World Cup striker’ Chris Killen.

(Image: Doug Moody)

The trio were a sign of things to come as Strachan set about dismantling Gareth Southgate’s technically gifted but brittle team and slowly replaced it with a worse one of his own, prizing dour willingness to work over technique and bringing a peculiar Presbyterian approach to stifling out joy and free expression.

He was bringing in players he knew from Scotland and paying English prices but they struggled woefully to bridge the quality gap. It was to be a disastrous and short lived Caledonian cul-de-sac.

Fired-up Flood scored on his home debut which may have nurtured my brief bromance with the slight schemer.

He sent in what was probably a cross towards penalty box plank Killen that curled in a gust and dipped into the top corner to square it up late in a 1-1 draw with Swansea.

That was pretty much that for the season. He made nine more high-energy, low-impact appearances before getting crocked in a drab 1-0 defeat at Cardiff in March, an injury that seemed innocuous at the time and he said afterwards didn’t hurt but which turned out to be a torn posterior cruciate ligament.

Flood had form for shrugging off serious injury. He had dislocated a kneecap in an All Ireland Schools cup final when he was 15 and as he limped to collect his medal told reporters it was “a bit sore.”

He fought his way back and was raring to go after the summer but was crocked again in the opening day 3-1 defeat to Ipswich after a freak collision with Matthew Bates.

It was another dislocated kneecap. “A bit sore.” He was out for six months. And by the time he returned everything had changed. Strachan had gone and his former Celtic boss Tony Mowbray was in charge.

On his exit from the Hoops Flood had told the press he hated life at Celtic and had never been given a chance by Mowbray.

“I just wasn’t playing and I was hating it to be honest,” he said. “People say, the green and white hoops, it’s great for a Dublin boy, but I absolutely hated it. I just wanted out.

“Maybe I wasn’t good enough. I never got a chance to prove if I was or wasn’t. Tony Mowbray just didn’t fancy me as a player. I just wish he was honest with me at the time and said, I don’t fancy you.”

Mogga didn’t fancy Flood at Boro either. After his return from injury he played just four games under Mowbray before being released alongside Maxi Haas just a few days after the season ended. Imagine being bracketed with Maxi Haas.

Flood had joined Manchester City from Dublin side Cherry Orchard at the age of just 17 but despite the occasional high-octane cameo - including an FA Cup game against Boro - he failed to break through and he made just 14 appearances in four years.

He joined Cardiff in 2006 for £200,000 but again failed to make a mark and played just a handful of games before he was loaned out for two successive seasons to Dundee United, a club that embraced him as he became a first team fixture. He was terrace hero for his all action style although he scored just one goal in 60 games.

But Dundee United couldn’t afford to sign him and as he entered the last year of his contract Cardiff flogged him to Celtic, another move that quickly went sour. Boro beckoned.

After being released from the Riverside, Flood spent two years back at Dundee United then had a successful three season stint before returning to Dundee last year. He remains an idol at Tannadice. They love him. I’ve got a t-shirt for sale.