The burst match-ball that summed up Kevin Roberts and a fitting Chester farewell
Roberts speaks to The Seal after the final game of his professional career
It was a sight that many a Chester fan will have been used to down the years.
The ball breaks on the edge of the box, an opposition player is there ready to pull the trigger and Chester fans hold their breath. Then out of nowhere comes a flying block from Kevin Roberts, defending as if his very life depended on it.
As the clock on the Deva scoreboard ticked over to 100 minutes in what was Roberts’ final game of a professional career that began in the youth team of the Blues, making his debut for the club in 2007, signing his first pro deal at the club in the January of that year, a little over 19 years ago.
More than 700 games later, with spells at Cambridge United, FC Halifax Town and Wrexham sandwiching a return to Chester back in 2019, Roberts called time on his playing career on Saturday, and the finale couldn’t have gone any better for him.
Moments before that block to deny Darlington what had seemed like a certain equaliser, Fin Shrimpton had fired Chester into a 98th-minute 2-1 lead in Connell Rawlinson’s first game in interim charge. Three minutes before that, another fresh-faced teenager had emerged from the bench to make his first ever appearance in senior men’s football, with Lewis Corbett making his bow.
