THIS month's FourFourTwo magazine carried a fascinating article about a former young Southampton ‘starlet' named Danny Mountain. Danny had made a successful career change to become, of all things, a porn star.

At 24, Danny is currently plying his trade, so to speak, in California. He still plays the odd game of football with former Wimbledon hard man, and Guy Ritchie casting favourite Vinnie Jones, for the quite appropriately named the Hollywood All Stars.

The article of course featured a small team profile photograph of Danny, whilst providing a much more attractive and large half page glamour shot of his current girlfriend, and co-star Eva Angelina (well, the male readership appreciated it!). Star of such motion picture classics at Bubble Butt Bonanza and To the Manor Porn, Danny is indeed living the dream.

Football is fertile ground for such colourful stories of past players, stars, and would be stars. English football is particularly interesting, and the English press of course feed this phenomenon.

There are those players that were interesting just because they were big name signings that never really panned out because they either suffered chronic injury, or were just plain nutters. A couple of players who come to mind are Seth Johnson (most expensive player per minute played), or Stan Collymore (in the nutter category). Of course Stan has made a successful post football career as both an actor (a popular choice for volatile footballers it seems), and as a football pundit.

It is remarkable how many former big name players are now football pundits, and colour commentators. The Sky and BBC broadcasts feature the likes of Robbie Earle, Paul Merson, Gary Lineker, and my all time favourite Andy Gray.

In my mind, to qualify as a subject of interest, a player really needs to have something about them that is at least anecdotally interesting. However, in Gary Lineker's case, he is interesting for much more substantive reasons. He effectively ended his top flight career prematurely by moving to the fledgling J league in 1992. At 32 years of age, he decided to move to Japan as a consequence of his young son requiring treatment there for a rare form of Leukemia. Lineker ended up playing 2 injury plagued seasons in Japan, capping a career in which he played 466 matches, scoring 244 goals, whilst never receiving a yellow or red card.

Other players may not necessarily be icons of the stature of Lineker, but are just particularly notable. One of my all time favourites was Steve Bull of Wolverhampton Wanderers. Bull was possibly one of the best strikers to never play in England's top flight. He was capped 13 times for England in 1989-90, playing 485 first team club games and scoring 254 goals (he also scored a club record 18 hat tricks). He was most recently manager of conference side Stafford Rangers during the 2008 season, according to Wikipedia.

Of course the A-League doesn't yet have the long and rich history of the English game, so the opportunity to look back and reflect on individuals past glories, or of amusing yarns is somewhat limited.

Possibly we will be looking back and asking what about Bobby Despotovski, or Fernando Rech, or whatever became of current players whose careers have been severely distrupted, like Nik Mrdja, Hayden Foxe, or even Ljubo? Hopefully for the latter, they end up enjoying a much more substantial career than a series of interesting anecdotes reflecting upon what could have been.