Fulham striker Bobby Zamora says some of his best days in football were with non-league Bath City.
Zamora was in the famed East End boys' club, Senrab, along with John Terry and Ledley King, and was taken on by West Ham.
But he was released without playing a game and pitched up at Bristol Rovers, where he encountered Ian Holloway. It was not, however, until he enjoyed a successful loan spell at non-League Bath City that his career began to turn around with the goals continuing to flow after he joined Brighton.
"They were some of the best years, I absolutely loved it," he told The Independent. "The same with the apprenticeship at Rovers, that stood me in good stead. Youth players now don't have to do anything, they don't know they are born, it's all done for them. I was cleaning showers, toilets, washing kits, whatever. It was part of football then and it was character building."
