Curtis Davies is phlegmatic about being sidelined for six months of his career, as befits a player who missed the first six years of professional life. He may be the first £8 million “pub-team player” to break into an England squad, but the Aston Villa defender can cope with the long road back from rupturing an Achilles tendon, having spent his formative footballing years not in some privileged academy but on the streets of East London.

His permanent transfer from West Bromwich Albion clicks through automatically this summer after a disrupted but memorable season on loan at Villa Park and if his rate of rehabilitation continues, he hopes to be available for selection in September.

Davies has always had something to say for himself – usually positive, but invariably truthful – and, in between the grinding hours on the trampette, the rower and the exercise bike, he intends to put his experience to good use at the end of this month by “offering an extra voice” at the Grass Roots Football Live show at the NEC in Birmingham.

His support for grass roots may be born of the fact that most of his were concreted over when he was growing up in Leyton. It is ironic that his role among the seasoned coaches at the NEC will be as the official ambassador for “the academy experience”, seeing as he missed out on exactly that at a stage when most of his peers were being groomed by the most qualified coaches.

At 23, Davies comes from an age when most young England squad candidates had been signed up by clubs in the slipstream of Howard Wilkinson’s Charter for Quality, which heralded the academies as the development centre for the best young players. Inevitably, some slip through the web and come into the game late; not many, these days, who go on to become £8 million players, however.

The former Luton Town defender has become famous for describing his first performance for Villa, in a Carling Cup tie against Leicester City in September last year, as no better than that of a pub-team player. But his development through the wilderness of rejection and financing his trials across London by stacking supermarket shelves is equally compelling.

“A lot of players in the Premier League have come through clubs’ academies from the age of 10 or 12,” he said. “But I didn’t come to a professional club until I was 15, when I joined Wimbledon. Until then I played at district and county level, for my school, in the Sunday leagues, but never got spotted. So I know how important the opportunities are for young players trying to maintain their development.

“Growing up in Leyton, I’d always be out playing with my mates and you’d find us in the street with a ball at our feet. We didn’t have any proper pitches around where we lived because it was a concrete jungle. In between the houses and the flats there was a bit of wasteland and that was our football pitch.

“I always knew I wanted to be a footballer, but when you hear about the number of fields and facilities being closed down nowadays, it makes you want to do something about it. I don’t want kids to miss out.

“Giving children the opportunity to play and enjoy themselves is the most important thing. Some people are despondent about the grassroots game because fields are getting concreted over, replaced by housing estates, and an event like this [Grass Roots Football Live] opens people’s minds to increasing the opportunities.”

When his PE teacher recommended him to Wimbledon but injury destroyed his chances after a single season, Davies could have been forgiven for sitting behind his games console and settling for Sunday-morning football. “It didn’t work out for me there, but that might have been the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I don’t blame them for not keeping me on because they hadn’t seen enough of me after I missed four months through injury.

“It was a case of getting a bit of a CV together and sending a letter off to all the clubs in the South East, asking for a trial. I enjoyed Wimbledon and the coaching was of a higher standard, but if I’d stayed there, with the way they have dropped through the divisions, I might not have enjoyed the career I have so far, winning the League One title with Luton and good times with West Brom and, hopefully, Villa.”

Davies had such faith in his ability that he wrote to Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, as well as Luton, Southend United and Colchester United. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” he said, smiling. “They can only say no – which a lot of them did.

“Luton replied two days later, so I went for trials there, and Southend and Colchester replied a couple of weeks later. A lot of letters came through after about a month; some of them were personalised, some were the standard line of ‘we are sorry we are unable to offer you a position as we have a full allocation of players at your age group’, which is fair enough. I’ve kept them all.”

When Davies took a strident stance to leave West Brom 12 months ago, Tottenham were competing hard with Villa to sign the England Under21 defender. An £8 million investment in a player they turned away without knowing may have caused one or two at White Hart Lane to splutter, but Davies takes no glee from such a scenario. “I was there to be rejected,” he said. “I had no right writing to some of those clubs, considering how little I’d done in football, but I’m quite happy with how I’ve progressed. I just bet a few of those clubs, perhaps lower down the ladder, wish they had signed me, the way it’s all panned out.”

Davies is relishing the opportunity to prove himself all over again. With Olof Mellberg leaving for Juventus and Martin O’Neill, the Villa manager, eager to acquire a top-class right back, Davies accepts that he will have to fight for his place. “Come the summer, I’m sure we’ll be making signings and looking to increase the quality of our defensive options,” he said. “So while I want to win things and put some trophies in my cabinet before I retire, I just want to get fit and get into the Villa side again. Then perhaps I can look to be pushing for the England squad again.”

Switch off, get out

Do not get Curtis Davies going on children and computers. He is frustrated that leaping around on a sofa taking on your brother on the Wii seems to equate to a workout for some children. “I play computer games, even at 23 years of age,” he said. “But it seems that a few too many kids are happier playing Pro Evolution on the computer than actually getting out into a field and kicking a ball around, or playing whatever their sport is. It’s quite upsetting. “Even if I’d had the best computers they have now ten years ago, I’d still rather have been out in a park with my mates than winning Master League on Isis. I think it’s got to start in the schools, but even if the resources aren’t there, we only needed jumpers for goalposts.”

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