The Dai Thomas Story: From Drogheda to Euro 2000, arrests, deportation and the end of a promising career

25 years on, we look back on the story of Welsh striker Dai Thomas; his forgettable Drogheda United loan spell and that infamous BBC Panorama expose.

£110,000 was a lot of money back in 1997. Certainly, it was a sizeable fee for a third tier English club to be spending on a player. But then, when the former England manager Graham Taylor is the man demanding the spend, it surely made the putting of pen to cheque paper all the more palatable.

The subject of that then hefty transfer was one Dai Thomas, the spending club in question Watford FC. Then 21-years-old, the Welshman had impressed in the old Third Division for Jan Molby’s Swansea City.

A rugged, broad-shouldered and aggressive centre-forward, he had earned the nickname ‘Psycho’ from supporters at Vetch Field. That was no mean feat for a youngster learning his trade in the unforgiving environs of the mid-1990s English lower leagues.