PALACE

with CARLO NASH THE meeting place said it all - the Hilton Hotel in Croydon where Mercedes taxi you between the railway station and the foyer while inside the purchase of two beers involves the kind of financial implications associated with the Chancellor of a Third World country.

Carlo Nash, tanned and tall, fits in easily to this environment though he still has to pinch himself from time to time to make sure he is not in the middle of one awfully long daydream.

One year after North West Counties League side Clitheroe's FA Vase Final defeat at Wembley Stadium to Brigg Town opened the door to a professional career with Crystal Palace, Carlo stands on the verge of completing one of the most phenomenal stories in football.

This afternoon Palace will have played the first leg of the First Division promotion play-off semi-final against Wolves at Selhurst Park and after Wednesday they will know whether they are in the final, which would mean a second visit to the hallowed turf for Nash in 12 months.

Should the London team come through that, Carlo will be a Premiership keeper next season and the biggest social climber in the capital since Dick Whittington and his cat.

"It's weird really," he confessed. "I said to my mother after Clitheroe were beaten at Wembley that I think one day I'll be back here - I couldn't have imagined that it might be so soon.

"Everything has been so sudden."

Carlo was thinking about his summer holidays the week after Clitheroe's defeat checking Teletext for the last-minute bargains.

The phone rang and Blues chairman Steve Rush, on the other end, sounded excited.

"Palace have come in for you and offered £35,000 which we've accepted," he enthused.

"You're to discuss personal terms with Dave Bassett next week."

After slapping himself around the face several times and then checking the colour of the water, Nash reasoned that what he thought his ears had just heard must be true.

His meeting with Bassett went to plan when he signed on the dotted line a two-year contract, he was making much more than a career move from the sales management position he held with F H Brown of Burnley.

"From the age of nine it had been my ambition to be a professional footballer," he recalled.

"When it finally happened, it was just a haze.

"I went to the training ground and met Ray Houghton who a couple of years earlier I was watching on TV score for Ireland against Italy in the World Cup Finals!

"The first day of training I thought, 'flipping heck.'

"As Clitheroe we trained once, twice a week, but I came to Palace and the first two weeks every day we ran around Richmond Park.

"It must have totalled six miles a day with sprints on top of that.

"So I was coming to training, going home and going to bed - I was shattered.

"Once the balls came out, the difference between non-league football and professional football became abundantly clear.

"Non-league you can get away with not having to make a save all game.

"In this league 98 per cent of shots hit the target - and they're not mis-hit.

"The crowd is another thing you have to get used to.

"At Clitheroe you played in front of 500 on a good day. For Palace the minimum is about 15,000. When I made my debut for the first team last September (owing to a Chris Day ankle injury) I was petrified."

Since February he has displaced England Under 21 keeper Day on merit and regularly gains the type of reviews published in last week's Croydon Advertiser following the 2-0 victory over Swindon Town: "Not until the 50th minute when Carlo Nash saved smartly in quick succession from Alex Smith and Jason Drysdale did Swindon have a shot. They looked a shadow of the side that had ended Palace's unbeaten home record last October."

The lifestyle, since moving to London, naturally has been transformed too.

Honorary membership of a local club, which all of Palace's staff are entitled to, gives him the chance to use the gym, tennis courts and the swimming pool which he does regularly.

Socialising in town, "quite a way away," might involve a visit to Legends a friendly club where you could bump into Les Ferdinand, Simply Red's Mick Hucknall or Nigel Benn who allegedly glassed his best mate here and is currently being tried this week.

He is also part of the catwalk set part-time.

Photo shoots for Company magazine and Sugar magazine have been arranged too and more work is lined up, leading to some unprintable jibes from his team-mates.

No wonder Carlo says he likes the area, apart from it being expensive, and is quite settled.

He has just bought a house near Purley, halfway between Selhurst Park and Palace's new training ground.

It's a far cry from his early days growing up in Bolton, where his aptitude for keeping goal saw him hook up with Bolton Town where he was spotted and enrolled into the Manchester United School of Excellence alongside the likes of Ryan Giggs.

But at 14, with great things beckoning, Carlo was involved in a car crash from which he escaped unh urt physically, but emotionally he was almost destroyed.

"It was my last year at the School of Excellence - I was 14 - and I it was quite a serious car accident," he recalled.

"It shot my confidence completely.

"My mum was driving and a Transit van jumped a red light and ran straight into us.

"Mum went pretty much hysterical and seeing her in that state was fairly traumatic.

"After this I lost my passion for playing football.

"I was released by Manchester United and apart from at school had no desire to play the game again."

When he didn't get the course he wanted at college - in business and leisure management - he dropped out of education and got a job with Limelight Signs in Bacup making motorway signs and screen printing.

Through a friend he was re-introduced to football and began to appear for Waterwork's Tavern in Bacup where he played for a year before Brent Peters took him to Rossendale.

He became a regular at Dark Lane under Chris Nicholson before Denis Underwood signed him for Clitheroe.

The rest, as they say, is history, 7,000 ecstatic fans cheering their heroes at Wembley in the FA Vase Final last May.

If it is a second appearance at Wembley in a few weeks time, he'll be playing in front of 70,000 and, if successful, will be reacquainted with Giggs in the most unlikely circumstances.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.