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SCMP Reporter

STEVE Guppy is not one of the household Premier league names that springs to mind when that cosy pub/parlour game of 'Name the England Squad' comes around. But the Leicester fireball might just force his way into Glen Hoddle's final calculations ? along with another unlikely candidate, Newcastle's Shaka Hislop.

  Guppy played in the disappointing England B international 2-1 defeat by Chile at The Hawthorns but was spared the flak reserved for more notable names like Coventry's Darren Huckerby and Blackburn's Stuart Ripley.

  Hislop was promoted to the full squad in the injured absence of Blackburn's Tim Flowers and Tottenham's Ian Walker and, if injuries prevail, may see World Cup duty this summer.

  The fact that Hoddle has stood by the troubled goalkeeper speaks volumes after he was dropped by his club for refusing to sign a new contract.

 Guppy, rejected by Southampton as a teenager and off-loaded by Newcastle without making a first-team start, did not play in the Premier League until last March - at the age of 28.

  And Hislop, facing a distinctly unpromising future with Shay Given installed as No 1 and his own contract running out, appeared to have no future on Tyneside.

   But then Given was struck by injury and Hislop was given a new lease of Tyneside life   Like Guppy, Hislop has made it to the fringe of international level as a 28-year-old unlikely lad. Though born in London, he was raised in Trinidad, where he played schoolboy football with two strikers who never quite made the grade in the beautiful game. But, then, Ato Boldon is the 200 metre world champion, and Brian Lara is the cricketing captain of the West Indies. Hislop did pad up with Lara at the Harvard Cricket Club but pointed out: 'I wasn't anything like as good as him, even though I once read somewhere that I had been on the fringe of the West Indies Test squad. I must have been some player ? I packed in playing seriously when I was 12.'      Like Hislop, Guppy was signed for Newcastle by Kevin Keegan, though he only spent three months on the staff at St James' Park, in 1994. He left before the 6ft 4in goalkeeper arrived from Reading.

  Guppy stepped down into the First Division with Port Vale, and it appeared his chance of making it at the top level had gone.

  Released by Southampton after a 10-week trial as a 19-year-old, Guppy worked as a brickie while helping Martin O'Neill lay Football League foundations at Wycombe Wanderers. Keegan felt he was overawed even on the training ground at Newcastle.

  'He was probably right,' Guppy reflected. 'But I had come from the Third Division to the Premier League. Even when I went to Leicester it took me time to settle in. I was only at Newcastle for three months. I only played one game, and that was as a second-half substitute against Manchester United in the League Cup. In the end, going to Port Vale turned out to be a smashing move for me.

  'I'm grateful to John Rudge for the chance he gave me and I'm grateful to Martin O'Neill, too. I was 28 when he signed me last year. I'd been talking to a club in Holland. I thought maybe I wouldn't get a chance in the Premier League.'   Eleven months later, Guppy has played European football in the Vicente Calderon, on the winning side against Manchester United at Old Trafford and is back on the international scene. Back? He played for England against Wales in 1992. 'We won 2-1,' he said, 'at Cheltenham.' That, though, was in his days as a semi-professional winger.



MOULD BREAKING