David Maidstone It always used to be that there were certain subtle tests you could use to work out how old people were. You know the ones: 'Who was your favourite Doctor Who?' and 'Who was your favourite Blue Peter presenter?' For City fans you could add 'Who was your favourite, not necessarily the best, centre half?' The resulting answers of Jon Pertwee, or John Noakes or Duncan Forbes would immediately place someone at 45 give or take a year.

David Maidstone

It always used to be that there were certain subtle tests you could use to work out how old people were. You know the ones: “Who was your favourite Doctor Who?” and “Who was your favourite Blue Peter presenter?”

For City fans you could add “Who was your favourite, not necessarily the best, centre half?”

The resulting answers of Jon Pertwee, or John Noakes or Duncan Forbes would immediately place someone at 45 give or take a year.

Now though you just can't be sure any more, as David Tennant rewrote Dr Who folklore, and Blue Peter no longer captures the imagination of young people today.

So what about the City version of the question and people's favourite centre half?

It used to be fairly clear, you had your Butler, Forbes, Stringer, Watson, Bruce, Linighan, Butterworth, Fleming, Mackay, Shackell, and Doherty fans to name but a few, and that allowed you to judge their age. However now we could breed a whole new generation looking at footage of Butterworth on Youtube or maybe just hearing people of a “certain age” tell of how good he was.

Yes Ian Butterworth is back at Carrow Road and no doubt has noticed how the facilities have improved, even if the football hasn't since he was here before.

Ian was of course part of Mike Walker's squad of 1992/3 that suffered from altitude sickness as it reached the top of English football. What a team, what a time?

Looking through that squad now, so many have gone into management in football, and clearly that says something about that squad and how they were groomed. The EDP Glory Years article (still on line) lists the squad and where they went afterwards and names like Robbins, Newman, Megson, Bowen and Culverhouse are all in professional football management or coaching. Several others are in youth coaching - Ekoku, Beckford, Polston, and Phillips. Lee Power even tried running a football club.

Other names also featuring locally are Jerry Goss on the backroom staff at City and Andy Johnson now playing up the road at King's Lynn.

Of course here at City we now have a management team of three of that squad in Gunn, Butterworth and Crook, together with ex-assistant manager John Deehan and memories of those glory years come flooding back.

NCISA is enormously proud to be sponsoring a true City legend in Ian Butterworth and hope to get him along to one of our forums later in the year.

It will give us all the chance to talk about current matters at Carrow Road, whilst maybe lingering for a short while in that glorious past.

But in the year 2020 when people say that their favourite City centre half was Ian Butterworth will they be mid 40s and remembering the 1992/3 season or only mid 20s and remembering a new glory time from 2009 to 2012?

So perhaps we should change the question to “Who was your favourite chief executive?” or would that just get the same answer from all - “Errrr the next one?”