With his graduate background he can talk one on one with all the fitness and medical experts

“With his graduate background, he can talk one on one with all the fitness and medical experts. It was a decade of utter paucity for Ireland’s Test team, but one in which O’Sullivan, an honours degree graduate in physical education, maths and science, painstakingly learned the coaching ropes.When Hook moved to London Irish, for their first season in England’s top division in 1991-92, he flew O’Sullivan over to take sessions with the backs at Sunbury. “I do want to stay here for as long as possible,” Crouch explains, “because I feel about 30 already I’ve moved around so much. I want to stay, first and foremost to keep this club in the Premier League.”A “relegation dogfight”, as he calls it, was the last thing on his mind when he was signed for £2m by the then manager, Paul Sturrock. “We were looking to push on from tenth [last season's finish],” Crouch says “But we started badly and never really recovered.

I wasn’t expecting that but it’s one of those things and we can’t think about it. We just need to start winning.”He readily accepted the move from Villa. “I was coming off the bench and so on but that wasn’t good enough for me,” Crouch says of his time in the West Midlands “It didn’t suit me at all. I got the odd game but I had to move on.”The odd game is what many thought was all he would get at Southampton – especially as James Beattie stayed at the season’s start. But it’s a measure of Crouch’s confidence that he never doubted he would get the opportunity.”The manager [Sturrock] said that he felt I was good enough to put a lot of pressure on Beatts and Kevin [Phillips],” Crouch says.

“He said that there was no way two players could go through a season and play every game, especially front-men. He had confidence in me, but obviously he left straight away and I didn’t know what was going to happen.”It seems to be a feature of Crouch’s career. “At one time you can be a favourite with the manager and then someone else comes in and discards you,” he says ruefully. It was Graham Taylor who had taken him to Villa for £5m – only to leave the next season – and the man who sold him from Portsmouth, just 48 hours after he took over, of course, was Harry Redknapp, now the Southampton manager.”It might have played on my mind a bit,” Crouch admits when asked how he felt when Redknapp arrived, “but as soon as Harry came in he said, ‘The reason I sold you is not because you are a bad player’. He said it was just because someone was willing to pay a lot of money. And if you look at the money he spent at Portsmouth he totally changed the side from when I was there and made it into an established Premiership team.”Redknapp, with a flurry of transfer-window signings, has tried to do a similar rebuilding act with the £6m he received from Everton for Beattie The two sides meet today at St Mary’s. “I spoke to James and he’s looking forward to it,” Crouch says The two are friends.

“He’s a good player, a goalscorer, someone you need to be wary of.”Nevertheless, Crouch admits that he had expected Beattie to leave. “I always felt in the back of my mind that Beatts would move on in January and obviously that was the case,” he says. “It has opened a gap and I’m looking to fill it, to prove to the manager that he doesn’t need to bring someone in and that the replacement is here already.”With four goals in five games, it’s working, even if the team have continued to struggle. Redknapp’s first move after taking over was to pick Crouch after the player had been ignored by Sturrock’s successor, Steve Wigley. Indeed, Crouch’s signing added to the pressure on the Scot, with claims that Southampton would revert to more direct football.”Anyone who watches me play week in, week out knows that’s not the case,” says Crouch emphatically. “As soon as I join a club the fans might be thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to play the long ball’ But as soon as they see me play they know that’s not right.

You can play the ball into my feet and we can take it from there.”He has the surest of touches but his height, unsurprisingly, always seems to be an issue. “I think without a doubt people look at me and my physique and being so tall,” Crouch says. “I’ve always just enjoyed playing football and it’s never really got to me I’ve had it all my life I’ve always been the tallest, even at school I think I was 5ft 9in at birth No, I’ve always steadily grown It’s just one of those things. I’ve learned to live with it and I enjoy it.”He’s also more aware of what he can and cannot do. “If someone wants two quick strikers and getting in behind them, and so on, then they are not going to play me That’s obvious,” Crouch says. “But there are other managers who like to play myself with someone like Kevin running off me, bringing others into play.”Redknapp hopes Crouch can create the same kind of partnership that Niall Quinn enjoyed with Phillips at Sunderland.