Here’s my column from last week’s Leader. It forms part of the paper’s comprehensive pre-match coverage every Friday, featuring interviews, an in-depth look at the opposition and lots of statistical analysis. All content in the column (c) www.leaderlive.co.uk.

When I was a kid I noticed an unusual phenomenon. I’d listen to the charts intently and devour albums voraciously. Yet despite the fact that my head was easily turned by a barnstorming performance on “Top of the Pops” or an airy word in the singles review column of Smash Hits, I came to realise that my favourite songs didn’t tend to be the tunes I fell immediately in love with and played to death, over and over, on my record player while cavorting wildly up and down a narrow rat run I’d cleared in my bedroom between the bed and a chest of drawers for my dancing/miming/free form music appreciation. My parents are very patient.

Instead, it was the songs I didn’t take an immediate like to which turned out to be the ones I’d love most dearly, and enjoy years later (can you believe it took me a bit to really appreciate “How Soon Is Now”? I’m ashamed). There might have been a succession of brief flirtations with more immediately attractive songs, but my heart will always belong to “Reward” by Teardrop Explodes.

These songs are known as growers. I’ve identified a grower in the Wrexham side too. The more I watch him, the more I appreciate Brett Ormerod.

He got off to a slow start, and last season when our new striker, and a “name” signing no less, kept us waiting for weeks for his first goal it was inevitable that there would be some impatient rumblings. That nagging sense of disappointment was exacerbated by the fact that Ormerod had looked very dangerous in pre-season. Now of course, anyone who draws concrete conclusions from friendly matches needs to take a good hard look at themselves. However, even bearing in mind the healthy scepticism with which I view games where players play at half tilt in front of a small crowd of the strange, twisted and deranged, I couldn’t help watching Ormerod’s clever movement and sharpness in the box and getting excited.

But those qualities looked to have been a little lost once the wild hurly-burly of the Conference began in earnest. Good judges told me he was too clever for the players around him but I wasn’t sure this was a great deal of consolation even if it was true. The fact was that, for whatever reason he wasn’t hurting the other sides.

But things started to change. He started showing flashes of quality, the goals began to come and the assists too. His surge forwards to score at Kidderminster in the play-offs was a highlight of the season, his dismantling of Braintree a tour de force. I started to get Brett.

This season, I’ve enjoyed him more again. I think that’s because I understand him a little more. His efforts have to be rationed these days, the days of tearing around at 100 miles per hour for Blackpool and Southampton are in the past. Back-to-back stand-out performances are unlikely, and he often drifts out of games for periods between his moments of quality. But what quality! He has the ability to create, to make space, to make a full back suddenly begin to question his own sanity.

Brett might get my musical references. Records, “Top of the Pops” and maybe even singles are either dead or on the verge. Ormerod should see my point as he belongs to a dying breed: active professional sportsmen who tick the same age range box as me on application forms. He looks like he might have been more of a Bez man than a follower of Julian Cope, but I’ll let that pass; even though time is short for a player of his vintage, he’s still found time to be a grower in my eyes.  I’ll be glad to see him back in action tomorrow.