Alan Nicholls opens the door to his sitting room and points to a photograph that takes pride of place. His son, also called Alan, has a ball in his hands and is standing alongside Peter Shilton, who was the Plymouth Argyle manager at the time. “That’s when Alan got called back to the ground after training, after being told he’d been picked for England Under-21s,” Nicholls says.

We walk through to the kitchen where there is a scrapbook full of newspaper cuttings on the table, a framed Evening Herald article on the wall – “Nicholls was a fleeting star who shone brightly at Argyle” is the headline – and a yellow and green Plymouth away shirt hanging from the door.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alan Nicholls with Peter Shilton, his manager at Plymouth. Photograph: Western Morning News

The shirt, which has “Nicholls” on the back and, poignantly, the number 20 below, was presented to him at an annual golf tournament in Shropshire, where they play for a trophy in his son’s name. It will be worn for the first time on Saturday, when Nicholls, together with a group of close friends, makes the 420-mile round trip from his home in Walsall to watch Plymouth host Exeter in a derby that takes place four days before the 20th anniversary of his son’s death.

A hugely talented goalkeeper with a maverick streak, Nicholls was 22 when he was killed riding as a pillion passenger on a motorcycle, on the A1 near Peterborough, just hours after playing for Stalybridge Celtic and only minutes after getting on the bike. Matthew Lindsey, the 25-year-old motorcyclist, also died in an accident that wrecked the lives of both families to such an extent that even now, almost two decades on, everything feels raw. “I always said to Alan: ‘Whatever you do, please don’t go on a motorbike’,” Nicholls’ father says.

Scott Lindsey, Matthew’s brother as well as Nicholls’ housemate and friend, was making the same journey back to Scunthorpe in the car for a night out – Nicholls was initially travelling with him – and it is harrowing to hear his vivid and traumatic account of a Saturday evening that went from laughing and joking one minute to identifying two bodies in a morgue a couple of hours later.

For Nicholls it was a tragic end to a colourful and chaotic life, and within that a football career that promised so much but imploded almost as quickly as it had spectacularly taken off. Nicholls went from playing for non-league Cheltenham Town in the Beazer Homes League in 1993 to lining up alongside Sol Campbell, Jamie Redknapp and Robbie Fowler for his country in 1994 to being sacked by Plymouth in 1995 after one off-field incident too many. Three months later he was buried wearing his England shirt.

Trying to piece together the complicated jigsaw puzzle that was Nicholls’ life reveals a remarkable and, ultimately, desperately sad tale that has largely gone untold outside Plymouth, where the stories of Nicholls’ nocturnal existence – he prepared for a man-of-the match debut against Birmingham City by going out on the town until the early hours – precocious talent and eccentric behaviour, on and off the pitch, are the stuff of legend.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest England Under-21s v France, May 1994

He was with Plymouth for only two years, making 79 appearances for the club, but for better or worse left an indelible mark on everyone who crossed his path. “Alan was like a tornado, he came in one door, went out another, there was chaos in between and before you knew it everything was finished,” says Mark Patterson, who played alongside Nicholls for Plymouth and tried, as best he could, to guide him on the right path. “Nobody will ever know what Alan could have done in his career. But, ability-wise, he should have been a millionaire by now. He was a hell of a talent.”

At a touch under 6ft, Nicholls was relatively small for a goalkeeper but the lack of height never felt like an issue because of his natural ability and a level of self-confidence that manifested itself in just about everything he did, whether rollocking experienced defenders, dribbling way out of his box or coming for crosses in a style that would never be found in a coaching manual. “He used to catch things one-handed at times,” Patterson says. “He was almost arrogant with it, because he was that good. I always remember my dad watching him and saying: ‘He’s a young Shilton.’”

He was not alone in thinking that – and it was the former England goalkeeper who showed more faith in Nicholls than anyone. As well as plucking him from non-league football and providing him the platform on which to shine in a Plymouth team who came close to winning promotion to the second tier in 1994, Shilton personally recommended Nicholls for an Under-21 call-up. While it was seen as just reward for Nicholls in an outstanding breakthrough season in professional football, Shilton would come to regret it.

Although a talented England side went on to win the 1994 tournament in Toulon, Nicholls’ only appearance came in a 3-0 defeat against France. While Shilton was surprised to learn that Nicholls had performed poorly – he was substituted after 78 minutes and culpable in one way or another for all three goals – much more disappointing was the phone call he received from Dave Sexton, the England Under-21 manager, when the players returned home. “Dave said: ‘Look, Peter, I’ve got to ring you because Alan wasn’t very well behaved out there.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alan Nicholls, left, again with Shilton at Plymouth Argyle. Shilton says he tried to be a ‘father figure’ to the goalkeeper. Photograph: Western Morning News

Shilton, who thought highly of Nicholls and admits he tried to be a “father figure” to him at Home Park, was left embarrassed by Sexton’s call and he now reflects on Toulon as “the turning point” in what had been a hugely promising career for his protege up until then.

“For the first time, I felt Alan had let me down,” Shilton says. “I remember taking Alan into my office and sitting him down before he went. I said: ‘You’ve got a great opportunity now to really put yourself on the map. You’ve done exceptionally well since you’ve joined us, so go over there, just keep your nose clean and if you get your chance, take it.’ But he didn’t take it. And that was Alan, unfortunately. He just didn’t seem to have the capacity to handle that sort of thing. For some reason he had a self-destruction button and that was the start of it when he went away with the Under-21s. It was probably a bit too much too soon. I think Alan went back to his old ways, being cocky and Jack the lad, and he probably lost his concentration and his attitude. And, you’ve got to say, that was probably Alan’s achilles heel.”

One of the tales that later emerged was that Nicholls had been playing up to his England team-mates in a hotel room by showing off his party trick, which involved smoking a packet-full of cigarettes at the same time, when Sexton gatecrashed the fun. Nicholls, so the story goes, was standing with his back to the door and submerged in a cloud of smoke, oblivious to the manager’s presence until the laughter stopped. A public dressing down followed the next morning.

There were also reports of a fracas over an unpaid hotel bill and an incident is alleged to have taken place involving a taxi after one of the matches, although Nicholls told his father that he was unfairly accused on that occasion. “Alan was telling me, whether it is true or not, the taxi was wrecked and they tried to push the blame on him,” he says. “I can’t remember who the other three in the taxi were, but Alan didn’t like that.”

Although Sexton and his staff were keen to see the back of Nicholls and his antics, several of the players that were in Toulon at that time speak warmly of their former team-mate. Darren Eadie, the erstwhile Norwich and Leicester winger, paints a picture of a happy-go-lucky character whose pranks helped to create the camaraderie that carried England to success. “Alan was the classroom joker but I think that was his way of fitting in, because it was a massive achievement for him to get into the squad in the first place,” Eadie says. “And, from a player’s point of view, you need somebody like that around when you’re away, almost like a Gazza, who will bend the rules a bit. He was a bit of an arse but the lads loved it.”

Trevor Sinclair, who was one of several players in that Under-21 squad who went on to become a full international, felt the same way. “I only knew Alan for a short time but it was a pleasure and when I found out about his death I was gutted that such a talent had left us,” he says. “Alan was a big character in the dressing room, fun and games all the time, and he didn’t mind people laughing at him either.

“I remember one day that someone hid his trainer, and he only had one pair with him, so he arrived at a game wearing his England tracksuit with only one shoe. Another time we went into Toulon and he’d forgotten his wallet and we were starving. Because he didn’t have his own money, I remember me, Jamie and Sol said: ‘OK, we’ll buy you a pizza but if we do that you’ve got to eat it in a certain time.’ I think he got to the last couple of slices and was almost sick. And, let’s get it right here, we won this tournament so all these jokes and all this messing about added to the team spirit and the togetherness as well as having decent ability.”

Nicholls was a showman in every sense. With Plymouth he turned the pitch into a stage and would often engage in banter with supporters while the game was going on, which only enhanced his reputation. “His party piece, I always remember, was turning around to the crowd and yawning when somebody had a shot at goal and it sailed over,” says his father, shaking his head and smiling.

Although Nicholls’ goalkeeping talent was obvious from a young age, so, too, was the flaw in his character that meant controversy followed him around. After attracting interest from all the top clubs in the Midlands as a schoolboy – he was born in Sutton Coldfield – Nicholls joined Wolverhampton Wanderers as an apprentice from school but was sacked inside his first year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trevor Sinclair in action for England Under-21s in 1994 at the Toulon tournament where Alan Nicholls also played for the team. Photograph: Tony Marshall/Empics Sport

“The [complimentary] ticket allocation, he started selling them with other players there, to make extra money,” Nicholls’ father says. “They were found out and they sacked all of them. They released the others but with Alan they kept his registration, which meant he couldn’t play first-team football for any other league club.”

Nicholls signed for Cradley Town in the West Midlands League Division One, which was way down the non-league ladder, and it was not long before Torquay came in for him. A deal was agreed with Cradley but the move collapsed because Wolves wanted a £5,000 fee as well as a 50% sell-on clause inserted.

Nicholls was effectively trapped in non-league football but he got the move that gave him the platform to return to the professional game when he signed for Cheltenham Town. Steve Daniels, Cradley’s manager at the time, remembers being invited to meet the Conference club’s board. “They asked me why they should sign Alan Nicholls,” Daniels says. “I said: ‘Because he’ll play for England.’ And I didn’t mean the Under-21s.”

In early 1992 Lindsay Parsons took over as Cheltenham’s manager and by the end of the following season he was lending Nicholls his club car to travel back and forth to Plymouth on trial. Parsons, who would go on to become Stoke’s chief scout under Tony Pulis, describes Nicholls as a “one-off” and admits he used to blame him for anything and everything that went wrong off the pitch. But he also had a soft spot for him and recognised his huge potential. “I did like Nico a lot,” Parsons says. “He would have been a Premier League player, without a doubt. He was brave as anything, he had a great left foot, he used to dribble the ball out from the penalty box almost to the halfway line, and you’d think one of these days he’s going to get caught. He was so cocksure of himself.”

Shilton had heard that Nicholls “could be a bit of a lad and liked a night out”, but he knew there was talent in his goalkeeping and in August 1993 Plymouth paid Cheltenham an initial £5,000 and Wolves a similar sum to finally release him from his registration at Molineux. With Ray Newland the No1 and Shilton closing in on 1,000 appearances, Nicholls was down the pecking order at Plymouth but everything changed three weeks after his arrival when he was given a run-out in the second leg of a League Cup tie against Birmingham City. Nicholls was so impressive in a 2-0 win that it was impossible for Shilton to leave him out.

With one of England’s greatest goalkeepers as his mentor, Nicholls flourished and it was not long before Plymouth offered him a new contract amid talk of interest from Newcastle United after a number of excellent performances. “Alan could make saves that matter,” Shilton says. “He wasn’t the tallest keeper but he made up for it with his agility, confidence and bravery. He didn’t make many errors and he did have games where he could win us points.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alan Nicholls in goal for Cheltenham Town, the second non-league club he played for after he was sacked by Wolves for disciplinary reasons.

Photograph: Barry Coombs/Empics Sport

All the while Nicholls was enjoying himself off the pitch or, to borrow Patterson’s description, “living life at 100mph”. He racked up almost as many speeding fines as clean sheets and Plymouth’s nightclubs started to become his second home. Everything was fast and furious and there was no time to rest.

“Alan was a really nice boy but he was not the sort of pro who would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and be in bed early in the evening,” says Chris Twiddy, who played alongside Nicholls at Plymouth and also shared a house with him. “He was restless, he didn’t have the ability to take it easy, he liked to be around people, he was a real social boy. I’m not saying he was out on the town every night but Alan wasn’t there if we were watching Match of the Day or a football game on the TV.”

In Paul Roberts’ book Peter Shilton’s Nearly Men, several of the Plymouth players say that Nicholls got away with far too much and that the manager should have come down harder on him. Shilton, however, rejects that criticism. “I never felt as though I wanted to wield the big stick with him too much,” he says. “I kind of wanted to be a bit more like a father figure, I never wanted to be really hard on him, I just had a theory that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. And I felt if he was going to make it, he didn’t have anyone better to look up to and respect.”

Interestingly, Nicholls’ father says that Shilton was the only person who could ever get his son to listen and step back into line. Yet even with Shilton there were moments when Nicholls pushed the boundaries. His father cringes at the memory of something that happened after a game at Port Vale. “They’re all waiting for Shilts to come and I heard Alan, next to the coach, shout: ‘Come on, fatty!’ I thought: ‘You can’t speak to your manager like that.’ No one else would have got away with it.”

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Although Nicholls was loud and, in many people’s eyes, arrogant, Patterson suspects that was a largely a “front”. One-to-one Nicholls could come across quite differently, as a short note in his father’s scrapbook suggests. A mother tells a story about how she approached Nicholls when she saw him in the stand at a reserve game to ask if he could sign a birthday card for her 11-year-old child. Nicholls offered to get the entire Plymouth squad to autograph it and said he would send it on. Instead he drove to Tavistock and turned up with it at their front door.

Nicholls’ popularity at Plymouth was rising all the time and for the majority of the 1993-94 campaign he was superb on the pitch, so much so that he virtually swept the board at the club’s end-of-season awards dinner. Yet he was not at his best in the 3-1 play-off semi-final second leg home defeat against Burnley that ended Plymouth’s promotion hopes and two weeks later he woke up to unforgiving headlines in the national press after that chastening Under-21 debut against France.

“I remember the game,” Sinclair says. “And I do remember one of the goals; it was a speculative effort and he didn’t deal with it well. I think it must have been nerves. Almost everyone else was part of a Premier League team and Alan was with what was a League One club effectively. I remember Alan taking it quite heavily. I also remember the papers being quite relentless the next day – it was like: ‘Nicholls Nightmare’, and I did feel for him.”

Hindered by a knee injury as well as a couple of suspensions, Nicholls made 26 league appearances for Plymouth the following season and there was a growing sense within the club that his hedonistic lifestyle was starting to catch up with him by the time Shilton departed in January 1995. “Alan did turn up a couple of times for training and got sent home because he’d been on the drink,” Patterson says. “And I knew exactly where he’d go – he’d always be at mine. He was helping with the wallpaper once. But he knew that my wife would tell him straight and he knew that he’d get it off me as well. I’d say to him: ‘You’re wasting your talent.’”

Yet the penny never dropped. Nicholls had already been sent two letters from the club warning him about his conduct – he had been fined £150 by magistrates after an incident in a nightclub in Torquay the previous summer – when he was arrested in August for drink driving after a collision with a taxi. Neil Warnock had taken charge by that point and the manager and the chairman, Dan McCauley, decided to cut Nicholls loose and terminate his contract. “He could have the world at this feet, but he hasn’t even got his feet on the ground,” McCauley told the Evening Herald.

Nicholls’ father is the first to admit that his son was “no angel and got into some scrapes”, yet he often wonders if things would have panned out differently at Plymouth if Shilton had stayed on as manager, or if his son had not broken up with his girlfriend, Lisa, with whom he had a young daughter. “The things he used to get up to, knowing Alan, didn’t surprise me,” he says. “Whether he got despondent with everything, I don’t know. Splitting up with Lisa … not that I’d blame that on Lisa for one minute. Whatever went on there was Alan’s fault.”

Desperate for another chance, Nicholls turned to Parsons, who managed him at Cheltenham and was working for Pulis at Gillingham in 1995. Nicholls went on trial at Priestfield and ended up signing a one-month contract that expired the day after his only first-team appearance, which was a 2-2 draw against Hereford United in the Auto Windscreens Shield. After several cruel twists of fate it turned out to be his last game in professional football.

On a Friday afternoon a couple of weeks later Nicholls was asked if he would be willing to help out Stalybridge, who needed a goalkeeper for their Conference game at Dover the following day as their regular No1 was suspended. Scott Lindsey, who lived with Nicholls and had recently signed for Dover, remembers the two of them laughing at the thought of playing against one another.

Everything from that point on is burned into Scott’s memory, right down to the amount of fuel his brother put into his motorbike just before tragedy struck. On the Friday night Scott dropped Nicholls at the Tollgate Hotel in Gravesend, where Stalybridge were staying, and the following morning he remembers hearing the sound of a motorbike outside his house in Gillingham.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Lindsey, whose brother Matthew was killed with Alan Nicholls in the motorcycle accident, at Swindon Town, where he works as a youth coach. Photograph: Graham Turner/The Guardian

Keith, his father, travelled everywhere to see him play but that weekend had a problem with his car. Matthew, Scott’s older brother, who never normally went to football, offered to take his dad from Scunthorpe to Dover on the back of his Yamaha. “It was a superbike, one of the fastest road bikes in the world,” Scott says. “My brother was a brilliant bloke. But I just didn’t like the fact that my dad had done that for me – it was 210 miles.”

Scott drove Matthew and his dad to a match that Stalybridge won 3-1, with Nicholls given the captain’s armband for the day. Uncomfortable with the idea of his dad going home on the motorbike, Scott decided he would drive back to Scunthorpe and invited Nicholls to come along for a night out. They returned to Gillingham to pick up the motorbike and then set off for Scunthorpe, with Scott driving his car, his father in the passenger seat and Nicholls in the back. Matthew followed on the motorbike.

“We’d come off the A14 and we were on the A1,” Scott says. “There was a garage coming up and my brother flashed his lights and put his indicator on, so I clocked he wanted to come off. He needed to put a bit of fuel in and he wanted a fag. I said to my brother: ‘Are you OK?’ He said: ‘I’m bored of following your car.’ Alan turned round and said: ‘If you’re bored I’ll come on the back with you.’ I couldn’t believe it because in the car Alan had been saying how he’d never get on a motorbike again because he’d done it once and it put him off for life.

“Anyway, they started getting kitted up. My dad finished his fag – and this is the biggest mistake I made and I have to live with it – I turned round and said: ‘Right, we’re going to get going while you’re getting ready, just keep heading A1 north, see you in a bit.’

“We drove for 20 minutes to half an hour, I couldn’t see them and I started thinking: ‘I’m not happy.’ So I pulled up and we waited. It’s obviously dark and every single light you’re thinking: ‘This is them.’ Eventually we turned around and we go back, and we go back, and we go back, almost to near where we left them, and then we’re seeing blue lights through the trees. I said to my dad: ‘That’s them. Something has happened.’”

They drove to the next roundabout and turned the car around but the A1 was already closed off. Nicholls had been killed instantly. Matthew died shortly afterwards in hospital. No other vehicles were involved and there was no evidence of excessive speed, but the road was damp and witnesses said the bike braked sharply before fishtailing out of control.

“It was horrific,” Scott says. “We went to the hospital that night, to the morgue, and they asked us to identify the bodies. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I’d been having banter with Alan earlier about him never getting on a motorbike. I’m now looking at his body, after he’s been killed on a motorbike. And I’m looking at my brother, who’s been there for me all my life, and he’s lying there as well.”

At 6am the following day Nicholls’ father was told the news that every parent dreads and 24 hours later it was splashed across the front and back pages in Plymouth. For many of the people who knew Nicholls there was a feeling of immense sadness – Shilton remembers being devastated – mixed with a horrible sense of inevitability. “Nobody could ever have seen what the outcome was going to be with the motorbike accident,” says Patterson. “But I remember having a conversation with a few old team-mates and we all agreed this was how it was always going to end with Alan.”

Nicholls’ funeral was held at St Paul’s Church in Halesowen, where he is buried beneath a headstone carrying the three lions crest and an etching of him making a flying save in goal for Plymouth. His father has the original photo of that image in his scrapbook and he also has a video of the Dover match, which Stalybridge sent on to him with a touching epitaph at the end.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The headstone of Alan Nicholls at St Paul’s Church in Halesowen. Photograph: Paul Roberts

Time has not been much of a healer for Nicholls’ father and he knows that returning to Home Park will stir some emotions. He quickly makes the point that he “doesn’t want to get upset again” when told that his son was a hugely popular player and that the 20th anniversary of his passing will not be overlooked. Many fans will reflect on the years that have gone by and wonder what Nicholls could have been; others will enjoy some happy memories of what he was in a life far too short. “Alan could be a pain in the arse to put it mildly,” his father says, smiling. “But he was my boy and I was so proud of him.”