Fan 'completes' 1996 Premier League sticker album
A man who was missing six stickers from a 1990s football album has tracked down the players in question so he could complete his collection.
Adam Carroll-Smith, a 29-year-old Portsmouth fan who lives in the city, found the 1996 Merlin Premier League album in his attic.
It took him six months to trace the missing players, visit them and take their photos for his album.
Mr Carroll- Smith said: "They were all fantastic, really accommodating guys."
He described how he always thought he had completed the 1996 album but had a "gut punch" when he opened it 16 years later to discover six spaces remained.
He immediately decided "a great wrong had to be righted" and started an internet search for former Southampton and Blackburn winger Stuart Ripley.
Now a solicitor, Ripley invited Mr Carroll-Smith to Manchester to take his picture.
Finding the two foreign stars he was missing in his album proved more problematic.
After two cross-channel trips, Mr Carroll-Smith found Newcastle United's Philippe Albert was working in the fruit and vegetable trade in his native Belgium.
Blackburn's Norwegian midfielder Lars Bohinen, meanwhile, was taking part in a Scandinavian version of Strictly Come Dancing.
The rest of the six players were tracked down through internet searching, social media conversations and word-of-mouth contacts through networks of football fans.
(continued, I've a almost complete edition of PG Tips Race Into Space....where to start?)
