I should have scored more goals for Albion

Walker is now 44 and player-manager of Ryman League division two strugglers Molesey.

He has picked up a knee injury and is using the setback as a reason to quit.

"I did retire about two years ago when I was at Cheltenham and they'd won the Conference to earn a place in the League.

"I thought the time was right to stop and I did for nine months.

"Then I got a call from Molesey to come down and coach and manage. I didn't want to play twice a week, but we had a pile of injuries and I was still fit and quick enough to add something to the team. It made sense to play.

"But I felt any injury I got would make me stop again and after about eight games I picked up a knee problem. I'll have keyhole surgery to clean it up, I think I've nipped a cartilage and it gets painful and puffs up.

"I am stopping. My health comes before my playing career.

"Now I'm going to concentrate on being just a manager. It is a young team with the youngest player about 17 years old and the oldest around 25 of the outfield players and the team have been struggling. We've had a few sendings off which is always a sign.

"It's my first job as a manager and I'm enjoying the ups and downs. You will have to ask other people what my style is, but I suppose I'm a talker rather than a fighter.

"I don't tend to rant and rave because the players are so young. But sometimes they take what I say too literally.

"The other day I told a player to stand on the goalkeeper when we got a corner and how to move for it. As the dressing room was so cramped I could only move a yard to show what I meant and when he went out there he only moved literally a yard each time.

"I surprise the players too. I have praised them when we lose 1-0 but have performed well and could do nothing about the goal they conceded. I criticised them the other night when they won 4-1 over aspects of the display."

Walker views his stint at Molesey as experience for moving back into league management after a brief stint as assistant to Eddie May at Brentford.

"It's a learning curve. My time at Brentford has made me want to become a manager even more even though it was very, very hard working with the chief executive at the time, David Webb. I was glad it ended after a few months.

"But I had ideas and made recommendations to Eddie and found I wanted to make decisions for myself.

"Ironically I'll earn Molesey promotion whatever happens because we are going into Division One South of a restructured league next season."

Walker works in television too, commentating on Brazilian and Italian football.

"I go into a studio in London and do it off the monitor for satellite television. I'm also involved in a project called the Footballers' Football Channel which is intended to go out on Sky Digital next year.

"I hope to do a bit of presenting on that. It will involve behind-the-scenes features."

Walker has the gift of the gab and he certainly had the gift as a skilled, swift winger which he demonstrated during his three years at Albion from 1990.

He added: "Barry Lloyd brought me down through Gary Chivers who knew I wanted to leave Fulham. It was an easy decision.

"I also knew Perry Digweed. It was a smashing place, the pitch was brilliant and I've got some fond memories of great cup matches against Manchester United and Liverpool. It reminded me of the time I was playing big teams regularly in the first part of my career."

Walker believes the play off final he played in against Notts County at Wembley in 1991 was pivotal in the club's history.

"If we had won we would have been in the old first division and that would almost certainly have saved the club from the trials it went through afterwards."

Walker does have a personal regret from his time at the Goldstone.

"I'd always scored goals as a winger no matter who I was with before I moved to Brighton and even when I left I got about 100 goals in four years with Woking. But while I was there I only got a few (12).

"It was pathetic and I just don't know the reason. But I still had my pace and could cross with both feet for Mike Small and John Byrne."

He was disappointed to lose touch with the Seagulls, although he returned to be guest of honour on one match day at Withdean.

"I'm not having a go at Brighton because it happens all through football, but I felt I was instantly forgotten when I left and apart from that one time, through Dean Wilkins when I went to Withdean, I haven't returned for any official engagemnts."

Walker remembers Withdean for training rather than playing.

"We used to run round the athletics track there. Although I was quite good at it, none of us enjoyed that."

He also recalled sessions at Worthing Rugby Club.

"I remember the states of those pitches," he laughed.

"Not surprising really because they played rugby on them, but they were full of molehills which was not conducive to good football.

Life's good, but Walker, who has a wife, Janella, and three children Hayley (21), Lee (19) and Ryan (14), misses the limelight.

"I loved the buzz of the crowd when I got the ball at the Goldstone. The crowds were excited by wingers."

Walker's football odyssey since signing professional 26 years ago has taken him from Chelsea (65 goals in 224 league and cup games) to Sunderland (including a 1-0 Milk Cup final defeat in which he missed a penalty), QPR, and Fulham (29 goals in 109 league appreances) before his £20,000 switch to the Goldstone.

He moved to Woking to enjoy three FA Trophy triumphs at Wembley and Cheltenham before settling down at Molesey last New Year's Day.

He has kept going because he loves to play.

Walker feels he can satiate that desire by playing for the Chelsea Old Boys in veterans tournaments like a recent one in Barcelona with another ex-Seagull Gary Chivers, or guest in the Hong Kong Soccer Sevens.

"I had a great time in Spain even though the weather was the worst they'd had for ten years and the injury limited what I could do.

"But it was a great crack, with all the banter and hopefully they'll be similar events in the future.

"I go along to the Hong Kong tournament each year through a German business friend of mine and that is fabulous.

"There are a few footballers in their late thirties and early forties who carry on. Jimmy Quinn, the Northern Ireland international is still turning out for Northwich Victoria. You go on as long as you can."

Walker would love to have played for England: "I should have been born 20 years later with my country struggling to find left-sided players," he says.

But he is not complaining. When the surgeon plays Through The Keyhole on his wonky knee, he knows he will have enjoyed his player career as best he can for as long as he can.