REUBEN Agboola admits he might have a tear in his eye when he meets up with his long-lost buddie Danny Wallace tonight.

The two players were inexorably linked by that November day in 1980 when they both made their debuts against Manchester United at Old Trafford.

But Agboola reveals: "The ties run much deeper than that. We're both London lads and were about 12 or 13 when first met at Saints London Schoolboy Selection Centre.

"The Centre was run by Bob Higgins and they had a team who used to play every Sunday.

"Danny made a splash even in those days.

"He was so quick and bright that he looked destined for great things."

Agboola admits it hasn't been easy coming to terms with the fact that his lively young pal has been slowed up by MS.

"When we used to play together for the Saints A side in the Hampshire League, there were a lot of older players who went out of their way to try and bring him down a peg or two.

"But they could never catch him. We used to laugh about that.

"The Hampshire League was a tough baptism for young players. We were regarded a bit as upstarts and we had to have our wits about us.

"In that respect I suppose it didn't do us much harm."

Agboola and Wallace had barely graduated into reserve team football at the Dell before manager Lawrie McMenemy called them up for the trip to Old Trafford.

"We both thought we were going along to carry the kit skip and it wasn't until just before the game that the gaffer told us we were playing.

"We didn't have a lot of time to get nervous but what struck me most of all was the noise of the Old Trafford crowd.

"Danny startled United with his pace and I made my own mark by tackling Gary Birtles and putting him out of the match."

When he left Southampton, Agboola played for Sunderland, Swansea and Woking.

He has two teenage children, Asa and Paris, and Asa, who is now 18, was in the Saints Academy in his early teens.

Father and son are both useful golfers but after his split with wife Carry, Aboola is getting ready to move out of his Sports Centre pub and start a new life on the east coast of Majorca where he'll help run a bar for a friend.

First, though, there's the matter of that reuinion with Danny.

"I'll feet a bit of sadness at first," he says, "but we'll pick up the threads again. I don't see my old team-mates that often but, when I do, we seem to quickly take up where we left off."