Accrington-born Mick Duxbury talks to us about swapping FA Cup winners medals and England caps for the tracksuit of a PE teacher.

NOT every PE teacher can say they once played in the Nou Camp and the Maracana, but former Blackburn Rovers defender Mike Duxbury is reluctant to boast about his achievements.

A two-time FA Cup winner with 10 England caps to his name, Duxbury must be something of a celebrity at Bolton School, where he now works after spells coaching at the Manchester United Soccer Schools in Hong Kong and Dubai.

But if the Accrington-born former full back – a boyhood Burnley fan but a product of the Blackburn school system – has stories to tell of his career in football, he knows he must first earn respect from his pupils for his ability as a teacher.

“There is a bit of interest in my career initially and that does help a bit,” said the 51-year-old.

“But that’s in the past now. I think if you weren’t a good coach or a good teacher you would quickly lose that respect.”

Perhaps best known for his time at Manchester United, Duxbury spent a year and a half at Ewood Park as a player but departed for Bradford four months before they gained promotion to the Premier League with play-off final victory over Leicester City in 1992.

Two years later he moved to Hong Kong to play for Golden FC, and his final game as a player came for them in a friendly against England just before Euro 96.

It an England tour that was memorable for most because of Paul Gascoigne’s ‘dentist chair’ antics in a nightclub following the match.

“Not for me, though, I remember it for the game,” he said.

“I knew it was going to be my last game as a player and it was a nice one to finish on.”

Following retirement Duxbury was keen to pass on his experience to the next generation and would eventually replace Paul Mariner as football coach at the independent Bolton School when his fellow former England international moved to the United States.

Duxbury left for a spell back in Hong Kong in 2004 but returned to the school three years later, this time as PE teacher at the junior school - with ex-Bolton keeper Keith Branagan having since arrived as the senior school’s football coach.

"It’s not just football, it’s all sports," said Duxbury, who also teaches cricket, swimming and athletics.

"I enjoy that and I think it would have been quite hard to have just done football.

"When I retired as a player I was thinking ‘help’ to be honest.

"I was struggling. I had always been hoping to go into youth coaching but the jobs didn’t come up.

"But one of the teachers, Chris Rigby, was someone I played with in the Blackburn town team when we were both schoolboys and he asked me if I would like to go and coach at the school.

"The football was just from September to Easter but they asked me if I wanted to stay on in the summer to do cricket, and of course I was out of work at the time.

"I left in 2004 for three years to go and do some coaching in Hong Kong and then Dubai but in 2007 we were looking to come back because my wife’s parents weren’t too well, and the chance to go to the junior school came up at the right time."

Duxbury developed his footballing talent at St Mary’s College in his school days before going on to enjoy 14 happy years at Manchester United.

Released in 1990, he arrived at Ewood Park under Don Mackay that summer.

Rovers finished 19th in his first year and, while the season after ended with promotion under Kenny Dalglish, it was an injury-hit campaign for Duxbury as he was restricted to only five appearances before his January departure.

"My time at Blackburn was okay," he said somewhat ruefully.

"In the first year we didn’t do very well but in the second season obviously we went up to the Premier League.

"But I had an injury with a broken bone in my ankle, and when I came back I wasn’t able to win a place in the team and moved on to Bradford.

"I found it quite hard after United and I think that would have been the case wherever I had gone. It became more like work than something I enjoyed.

"It was only really when I went to Hong Kong that I started to enjoy it again."

His fondest memories, though, were of the 1980s, when he experienced the biggest of stages for both club and country.

"I think I only played in one World Cup qualifier for England but I did play in the game in Brazil when John Barnes scored his famous goal," he recalled.

"The Brazilian players were my heroes growing up, people like Pele and Jairzinho, so to play in the Maracana and to beat them was fantastic.

"For United the games I remember most are my full debut against City at Old Trafford and I was lucky enough to win the FA Cup twice, in 1983 and 1985.

"Then there was beating Barcelona when they had players like Diego Maradona and Bernd Schuster (in a European Cup Winners’ Cup quarter final in 1984).

"We were 2-0 down from the first leg at the Nou Camp. I don’t think Maradona played in the first leg. He was ill or something, they rushed him back for the second leg and he wasn’t at his best.

"But we came back to win 3-0 at home and it was one of those special nights.

"If you had said to me when I was a schoolboy in Blackburn that I would go on to play for 14 years for United, I would never have believed you."