ISRAELI Aaron Fadida, the leading goalscorer and joint player of the season during the 1995-1996 campaign, has just returned to England and made his debut at 40 years of age in the Devon County Dodo League?s match at Langsford Park on Sunday, creating a number of league and club records into the bargain.
Fadida originally joined the Lambs early in the season of 1995 and ended up as leading goalscorer with 27 goals from 25 league outings. He returned to his native Israel at the end of that season to take up a coaching post with a national premier club, but decided to return to England with his Plymouth-born wife and two children a few months ago.
Invited to attend the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Red and Black Club on Saturday evening by chairman Robin Fenner, it took little time for the managers to bring out the signing-on forms.
?This diminutive natural goalscorer looks more like thirty than forty years of age,? said Robin Fenner. ?With a veterans? game on Sunday morning, it took the managers less than five minutes to decide he should immediately come into the team and what an impact he made in the first fifteen minutes.?
Within those 15 minutes he had recorded a hat-trick, and five minutes later he had notched another three goals.
The second half was little different as he netted another trio of spectacular strikes, helping the Tavistock team to an emphatic 15-2 win against a somewhat weakened Newton Abbot side.
As far as Tavistock club records allow, Fadida is the first Tavistock player to score a triple hat-trick in league football and most certainly the first to achieve the enviable task in the Devon Dodo League.
Robin Fenner added: ?One can only watch and see his progress once again. The late and great Stanley Matthews once said: ?Natural goalscorers are born not made? and there is little doubting that Tavistock have a natural goalscorer on their books once again thanks to the return of our Israeli sensation.?