Last week, for several hours, Jamaican footballer Ricardo Fuller basked in the spotlight. He was on every British news bulletin and his name was on the lips of every single football pundit. This was a result of a stellar performance for his latest club, Stoke City. He scored two goals and helped knock football superstars Arsenal out of contention for the FA Cup in a game that ended three goals to nil.

The London Guardian said: “Ricardo Fuller scored the first two goals for Stoke and ought to have had a penalty.” The Daily Telegraph put it even more vividly: “Stoke went potty in the Potteries (Stoke on Trent is the traditional home of Britain’s pottery industry) with two goals from a rampaging Ricardo Fuller – someone certainly fed him raw meat yesterday morning.”

Fuller’s performance last week may have come as a surprise to the football writers, but it did not come as a surprise to the man himself. “I see myself as a lion. Everyone has always said I have the heart of a lion. I have got a tattoo of that to remind me what I am,” said Fuller. His current manager at Stoke, Tony Pullis, thinks highly of him, but he knows that the Jamaican cannot be tamed. “He is uncoachable,” said Pullis, “but he has great talent. I can be out there all day saying ‘Ric, when we get the ball can you go into this channel because the opposition have got weaknesses on the left side’, and he will say, ‘Yeah, yeah got it.’ Then come Saturday, you are thinking, ‘Ric, I have spent three days telling you not to do that and now you are doing it’, but he can make it work because he is so gifted.”

The coach who gave him his first break in England was Craig Levin, who currently manages Scotland. He said of Fuller, “Every morning he would come in with a big smile and say, ‘All right, coach?’ That was his line. Sometimes in football you love to see people get on. I am so happy that he is doing well.”

But Fuller’s life and career have not all been sunlit uplands. He started life in West Kingston. A natural athlete, he won a scholarship because of his abilities as a sprinter. However, he hated sprinting so much that he hid under his desk to avoid training. But he was a brilliant schoolboy footballer who was a star of Jamaica’s Premier League when he was still a pupil. He was soon noticed by British talent spotters and won a trial with the British club Charlton. He got off to an exciting start with the British club, scoring five goals in three friendly matches. An even bigger British club, Liverpool, showed an interest, so Charlton quickly offered Fuller a contract. Soon after, the first of a series of medical disasters struck. As part of completing the contract negotiations, Charlton asked Fuller to take a medical. It was then that Fuller discovered that he had a serious back problem. Charlton promptly cancelled the contract and Fuller had to have a corrective operation and spent 13 months out of the game. As Fuller himself described it, “I was just 19 and Charlton had agreed to take me for £1.25 million. Then to have it all taken away from you because of the medical. I had never felt problems in my spine before. It was the lowest point of my life.” In 2000 when Fuller’s dreams of football stardom were dashed, the West Indies cricket team played England at Lord’s. “The hospital was opposite Lord’s. I will never forget that time as it eventually saved my career. But it was worrying. I went across the road to watch cricket one day with a corset on my back. It was very uncomfortable sitting there like that all day,” reminisced Fuller about that summer. After nearly a year, Fuller went on to play a few games for Chrystal Palace football club. But he had not got over his surgery properly and had to return to Jamaica.

Then he had a second chance of football stardom in Britain when Tony Pullis brought him back to play for Hearts football club. He did well, was bought by Preston and once again Liverpool took an interest. But in 2003 he twisted his knee and was out of the game for nine months. As Fuller himself put it, “I have never had the luxury of good luck, like some players do. I have had setbacks at times when I should have been flying. Injuries kept stopping me on the way to becoming the special player I believe I can be. But here I am.”

After recovering from his knee injury the tenacious Fuller had a spell at Portsmouth, then he went to Southampton, then Ipswich Town. He finally ended up at Stoke where he had last weekend’s triumph over Arsenal in the FA cup.

After a career dogged with illness and injury, Ricardo Fuller is finally having his place in the sun.