Bristol Rovers legend Rickie Lambert went on to enjoy a distinguished career in the Premier League, but the favourite goal of his career came in a Gas shirt.
Lambert, now aged 38, lit up the Mem from 2006-09, scoring 51 times in 128 games before playing for the likes of Southampton, Liverpool and West Bromwich Albion.
But despite bagging more than 200 goals across a career which included 11 England caps, Lambert believes his biggest moment of genius came when playing for Rovers.
The Merseyside-born striker, in an Instagram Q&A with Hawthorne FC International Soccer Development School on Thursday, picked his stunning volley against Luton Town in September 2007 as the finest goal of his career.
In the second minute of the League One clash, Lambert stunned the Kenilworth Road crowd with an outrageous volley, and he followed it up with a late winner for Paul Trollope’s side.
Lambert can perhaps consider himself unlucky that the long-range stunner was beaten in the final of the Gas Goals World Cup – a vote conducted by the club on social media amid the coronavirus shutdown to determine Rovers’ best ever goal – by Lee Brown’s promotion-winning finish against Dagenham & Redbridge in 2016.
Nonetheless, Lambert rates it as the goal of his life.
“The best goal I’ve ever scored was for Bristol Rovers, a volley,” he said.
“It dropped from the sky about 40 yards out and I’ve hit it without bouncing.
“Top corner, top bin. The keeper was on his line and he didn’t even dive for it. It went that fast, right into the top corner.”
Lambert remains in the hearts of Gasheads to this day, and the promotion-winning hero remains equally fond of the club.
In the Q&A, he joked about his audacious chip which was one of the highlights of the 2019 Martin Belsten Memorial Match, where Pirates legends played a team of fans to raise more than £17,000 for the British Heart Foundation.
“When I got fitter, I could get closer to the goal, but now it’s easier for me to shoot from there,” he said.
“I caught that one sweet, to be fair, that was one of my good ones.”
