'Wrapping cars in cling film, tying shoelaces together and cutting socks in half' - Jamie Vardy's impact on Fleetwood Town has never been forgotten

The most famous player in Fleetwood’s 110-year history will return to the club that served as a spectacular career launchpad when Vardy’s Leicester City face the League One side in front of a sell-out 5,000 crowd at Highbury Stadium tomorrow lunchtime. Of all the weekend’s FA Cup third-round ties, it is arguably the most romantic and the sense of excitement and anticipation in this coastal, windswept Lancashire town on the northwest corner of the Fylde is palpable.

When Vardy joined Fleetwood from Halifax for £150,000 in August 2011, the BBC’s website had the future England striker and Premier League title winner down as a midfielder, an amusing reminder of how little known he used to be. There will be no danger of the broadcaster making the same mistake when the game is televised on BBC One.

Fleetwood will make around £400,000 from the match. Yet they have already pocketed upwards of £1.75 million from Vardy’s sale to Leicester and extraordinary subsequent success thanks to the foresight of owner-chairman, Andy Pilley, and chief executive, Steve Curwood, who insisted on a series of lucrative clauses in the deal. “We’ve cleaned the contract out now in terms of the add-ons – appearances, goals, an England cap, it’s just a shame there wasn’t one for winning the Premier League title!” Curwood said, smiling. “The one thing that has eluded us so far has been the sell-on fee.”

Fleetwood will be entitled to 30 per cent of the profit if Leicester ever sold Vardy so it does not require much of a leap to imagine the reaction when the striker appeared on the verge of joining Arsenal for £20 million 18 months ago. It would have resulted in a cash windfall of £5.7 million, which probably explains why Pilley and Curwood set up Google alerts on their phones to keep them up to date with any transfer developments at the time.

“Andy and I were certainly keen,” Curwood recalled. “We had a new playground set up to name after him! Andy was willing to drive him down there [to Arsenal].”

It was Vardy’s goals – 31 in 36 Conference Premier games – that spearheaded Fleetwood’s promotion to the Football League for the first time and left Pilley joking that it felt like they were “cheating” having him in their team. Vardy left just as much of an impression off the field, though.

“Jamie got really pally with Jamie McGuire and Andy Mangan, they were the jokers of the group and always up to something,” kit manager Danny Moore explained. “You knew if anything happened those three would be behind it. On the chef’s birthday they wrapped his car in cling film and covered it in food. It was totally enclosed. The big things like that were planned but some of it was off the cuff. Tying shoelaces together, deep heat in clothes. Lads would go to put their socks on and there would be no toes in them.”

Fleetwood had yet to move into their inspiring £9.5 million Poolfoot Farm training ground when Vardy was at the club and instead trained at Fylde rugby club in Lytham St Annes. On occasion, though, they would have to use the public park opposite Highbury Stadium. “When we used to do the bleep test someone would have to drive their car on to the pitch, put the cassette in and turn up the volume so you could hear the bleep test going,” Pond recalled. “Then you’d start running.” Training at the rugby club once, Vardy lost a forfeit and had to run naked around the pitch in the freezing cold wearing only his boots.

The Vardy/Fleetwood story is so compelling because the player’s own remarkable rise from playing non-league football part-time and working 12-hour shifts in a carbon-fibre splints factory mirrors the club’s own ascent from obscurity. Vardy has undoubtedly put Fleetwood “in the limelight”, as Pond says, and, according to manager Uwe Rosler, “been a massive milestone in the history of this football club”.

But no one has done more than Pilley to get Fleetwood to where they are today. A local, self-made millionaire who set up his own utilities business in 2002, around the time he first became involved with Fleetwood, Pilley has invested around £40 million of his own money in the club. Winning the North West Counties League in 2005 marked the first of six promotions in 10 years. Still, Pilley was somewhat desperate at the time he paid Vardy £850 a week to move to Fleetwood. His newly-promoted, and expensively assembled side, had started the Conference season unconvincingly and a shortage of goals was the biggest worry. Vardy changed all that, and famously celebrated promotion by eating 20 McDonald’s chicken nuggets and sleeping in his Saab after a particularly raucous night out.

It is a cruel twist of fate, then, that Pilley is likely to miss the reunion after finding himself stranded in Haiti on a Caribbean cruise with his family. Vardy himself is not certain to play because of a groin injury but he will be at Highbury regardless. “I think there is a special relationship between the chairman and Jamie and rightly so,” said Rosler.

Vardy certainly remains an inspiration for the likes of Pond. The Fleetwood defender is in the Guinness Book of Records as the only footballer to play in seven different divisions with one club. He did not turn professional until he was 26, up until when he was getting up at 4am most days to work as a lorry driver’s mate. “People think it sounds easy but on some stops you had three tonnes of sugar to shift!” he said.

“When you watch Jamie play you can see his non-league mentality - the way he chases things, his hunger, you don’t see that from all Premier League players. I’d like to think he still knows what the Fleetwood attitude is. It’s exciting times for everybody.”