The boy was on the small side. By the time he was 16, he still stood only a fraction over five foot, as his father would say. At his local football club's academy they documented it as 1.4m with a frame to match. Too much of a lightweight.Nevertheless, Jamie Vardy could play a bit, so they took him in hoping he would grow into a role in the team. But the club later decided they wanted big blokes and so they dumped the kid who loved them.The club hadn't much cared about the boy; they were interested only in his soccer skills. He left without much of an education. We would have said he was a bit rof.Apart from some basic reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, he didn't know much beyond football. He was in despair. He stopped playing football. He gave up believing that he could make it as a professional footballer."It was the lowest point in my career," he would recall 12 years later. "It was hard to take."At the time, he would have to catch up on real life, so he went to college and found a job as a technician learning to make carbon-fibre splints for disabled people. He began to play football again. A small club operating outside of the national leagues offered him £30 a week. Riches! He repaid them with 66 goals in 101 games.But growing up in a dodgy part of a decaying industrial city, he was prone to the bigotry and prejudice of such places. A "racist incident" at a local casino and an assault conviction got him in trouble with the local constabulary. Police put an ankle bracelet on him and he was subjected to a 6pm curfew.The manager from a slightly richer club in the district heard about the boy and came to watch him play on a weekday night. But the boy was still under curfew so he didn't play. The visitor persevered and a few weeks later offered the club £15000 for the once small kid who, since his leaving the academy, had a growth spurt and was 20cm taller.The boy scored 27 goals in his first season, helping his new club to promotion. By the end of the season, the boy signed for another club - one with more money. He went across for £850 a week! He scored 31 goals for them in the first season and could now afford to drive his own car to training.Three years ago, the boy who was once too small was now a man and a local celebrity signing autographs. He was plucked from a football backwater and thrust into the national spotlight at Leicester City. He was not intimidated. In the first season he scored 16 goals for the Foxes, leading them into the English Premier League.In his first season at the very top, he has scored nine goals in nine successive matches, only the second player in the league to do so.Tomorrow, if he recovers from an injury that kept him out of the England team this week, Jamie Vardy will go out for Leicester City against Newcastle United at St James's Park.Many who might not even be Leicester fans will be rooting for the little kid who could...