Cast your minds back to early 2001. Whisper this but it was actually a time before Clinton Morrison had made the decision to represent Ireland. The Londoner was making waves at Crystal Palace with his goalscoring potential as well as his larger than life personality.
Palace faced Liverpool in the semi-final of the Worthington Cup and Morrison scored the second in a 2-1 win which put the London club in driving seat after the first leg of the tie. After that goal, it's fair to say Morrison let things get to his head a bit and he had the following advice for Michael Owen.
I was looking at all the opportunities Owen had and wishing I could have had some of them. I would have put at least two of them away.
I don't think Owen has been the same since his injury problems. He is just a bit low on confidence at the moment. All I can say to him is to keep your head down, work hard and hit the target. You will score goals eventually.
This was three years after Owen had lit up the World Cup and at the start of the year that he, somewhat controversially, won the Ballon d'Or. And here was Clinton Morrison giving him goalscoring advice. It's wonderful looking back on it in hindsight but at the time, Morrison was a marked man for having the audacity to say what he did.
Morrison gets a chance to go up against Liverpool again later today as Jurgen Klopp's men travel down to St James' Park to take on Exeter and speaking to Off The Ball last night, the now 36 year old was given the chance to go over what happened during the second leg.
It was tongue in cheek and then we played the second leg. I remember we lost 5-0 and a chance came to redeem myself in front of the Kop. The ball fell to me, left foot and I just did a big airshot and landed on my bum.
Obviously it was on Sky, the cameras went to Michael Owen and he had a giggle and Gary McAllister came up to me and just said 'don't worry, mate, Michael Owen would have scored that'. That's when you want the ground to swallow you up. But it's all fun and ever since then I've had a good relationship with the Liverpool fans.
Morrison got over that humiliation of course. He became the ultimate cult hero in Irish football before retiring in 2014. According to the man himself, his moves on the dancefloor convinced Exeter that he was worth another shot at the Football League and it will be great to see him get a chance to score against Liverpool one last time tonight.
