It was a cold night near Stoke that made Alex Williams realise he had had enough. The former Manchester City goalkeeper was trying to recover from a back injury at Port Vale, but after accepting that he would never be fit enough to play at the highest level again he decided to end his professional career at just 25.
"I was about 80 per cent fit, playing a game at Port Vale one night that was hail, sleet, and snow," he told the Manchester Evening News. "The stadium held about 45,000 people of which there was only about 5,000 there and I looked round the stadium and thought 'what am i doing here?!' I went in to see the gaffer John Rudge the next morning and said that was it.
"I felt three things. I was cheating my club teammates at Port Vale, I was cheating the fans and most importantly of all I was cheating myself.
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"With all due respect to some footballers who drop down the leagues, I didn't even play non-league because if I couldn't play at the top I couldn't play at all. I didn't want some non-league player giving me verbals saying how did you end up playing football, you're crap? I didn't want to lower myself to that so I decided to quit."
For such a short career, Williams achieved more than many do with a longer spell. He was part of the last England squad to win the Under-21 European Championships and was voted the best in his position in the Second Division by the players as he helped City back into the First Division in 1985.
His breakthrough in the team in 1982 coincided with a difficult season that ended with relegation after a home defeat to Luton Town, and while the keeper does not shoulder the blame for going down he uses his form in the two seasons afterwards as proof of his part in getting the Blues back to where they needed to be. It was just unfortunate that a slipped disc in his back and the lack of medical specialism in sport at the time meant that Williams could not be where he wanted to be for longer, playing his last City game in 1985 and retiring two years later.
Despite the heartbreak for Williams at a career cut short, there was pride in his performances that prompted a change in how people saw him and inspired other black goalkeepers in the game. The youngster was regularly abused for the colour of his skin, yet used it to motivate him to better things.
"It was difficult," he admitted. "I consider myself to be the first modern-day black goalkeeper to have played in the top flight.
"There was a lot of hooliganism and racism in those days, certainly in the early 1980s the First Division had six-foot metal barriers at the front of the stands to stop people getting on the pitch. Whatever you can think of calling me, I was called in those days. If you're an outfield player, you can run around and potentially get away from where the trouble is but if you're a goalkeeper you can't.
"Initially when I played a lot of people referred to me as Alex Williams, the black goalkeeper. After about a year, when I played the full season in the old Second Division I was voted the best goalkeeper by the outfield players in the league.
"It's one of the things I'm most proud of, to be voted the best by your peers is really brilliant. It made me try even harder to win the fans over and I'd like to think I did that. It paved the way for people.
"I speak a lot to David James, who said I inspired him to go on and play and Shaka Hislop so if nothing else it paved the way for those lads. I look around at a lot of games in the MLS and the lower leagues here and there are now a lot of black or ethnic goalkeepers up and down the country."
Knowing that his playing career was almost certainly coming to an end, Williams - knowing he wanted to stay in football - had begun his coaching qualifications and is proud to have spent some time in recent years working in the City academy under Jim Cassell with fellow goalkeeping coaches Dave Felgate and Andy Rhodes. He includes Kasper Schmeichel, Wayne Hennessey, Kieran Westwood and Daniel Grimshaw in the list of keepers he has played a small part in developing, and was especially that a young Schmeichel's dad watching every session on the touchline only had compliments for the way his son was brought on.
Pretty much ever since his retirement though, Williams has devoted most of his time to City in the Community, the scheme set up for the football club to make a positive difference to their local area. What started with a team of six working out of a semi-detached house outside Maine Road with a turnover of £10,000 now incorporates 120 staff and has a £3.5m turnover.
Born in Moss Side, Williams always felt a pull to helping in the community and quickly discovered that football was a huge enabler for social change. He loved his work, and his job at City so much, that he turned down a job to be Everton's goalkeeping coach working with Neville Southall in order to stay with CITC.
"Initially it was just going into school delivering football coaching but what we found was the brand of the football club and the power of football was so strong it could engage whatever groups we wanted to work with and dovetail with experts," he said. "If we are doing stuff on gun or knife crime, we get police and social services involved, the big thing at the moment is mental health so we work closely with the NHS and have a couple of mental health mentors working with us out in the community.
"We have walking football sessions here, we find in particular elderly men don't like going to the doctors or get stuff seen to but they're more likely to come to us and we can signpost them. The brand and power of football is the way in to deliver all the social messages that we do at the moment.
"I enjoy absolutely every bit of what we do. I'm one of very few people from leaving school at 16 years of age who has bounced out of bed every morning and enjoyed going to work either as a footballer or to do the work on the football community scheme.
"I've had opportunities to leave this football club. When I was working with the academy, Howard Kendall was the Everton manager and their goalkeeping coach got injured when the great Neville Southall was there.
"I went in a couple of mornings a week to help him out short term and they offered me a three-year contract to be Neville Southall's goalkeeping coach and I turned it down because I couldn't leave Manchester City. I just love the club. It's been great for me and I'd like to think I've been great for it."
The transformation at CITC has had to keep up with the massive changes at the football club. Since Sheikh Mansour's takeover, City have become one of 11 clubs under the umbrella of City Football Group, each one with their own community that needs serving.
Williams has been out to New York, Melbourne and elsewhere to train up staff at partner clubs but is also keenly aware of the need to stay grounded with Greater Manchester as the club gets more and more global.
"It's very important because we're becoming a big global football club. We get a lot of people flying in from around the world. It's really important we're seen to be going out into the community if they've got limited access to coming to the club.
"The reach we have through various initiatives is unbelievable. We've got 120 staff, we've started to try and ensure with our social media we get the message out to local people. A lot of people have always known we've had a good community scheme but they didn't really know what we actually do.
"It's important to get the message out there. We run free soccer schools every half term and have three or four around Manchester, we provide free food for children under 10. We're doing so many different things for the local community and long may it continue.
"One day I can be in a school talking to eight and nine-year-olds, the next day I can be in London talking to a load of CEOs from global companies who support our foundation. With everything else in between, I love the variety that the job brings. I don't get up and do the same mundane thing every day."
There is at least a week's worth of stories that Williams could tell about his life and career that a 30-minute interview can't cover, and the enthusiasm with which he still bounces around the Etihad prompts the obvious question of why it is that he is stepping down. At the end of August, he will step down from his ambassadorial role with City's charity after 33 years of service - and more than 20 since he was awarded an MBE for his work - and 45 years since he first joined as an apprentice player.
Roel Vries, the Chief Operating Officer of CFG, has described the impact of Williams across the city as "beyond measure" and added: "I know that his legacy, along with the stories told by the people whose lives he has changed, will continue for many years to come." The club will be celebrating his career this summer with a special tribute.
Part of the reason Williams is stepping down is personal; having lost a number of friends since the pandemic, he is keen to enjoy retirement. It is also about leaving on a high though, and whatever else he does with his time will not stop him watching City every week.
"I've been doing it a long time and what has really made me think about it is I've lost quite a few friends," he said. "The most recent one was Andy Goram, the ex-Oldham goalkeeper who I knew very well. There have been so many others - Raddy Antic.
"I had a young man who I worked with called Tom Flower who I worked with at CITC for 15 years and he recently suddenly passed and was about 15 years younger than me. It just made me think. I'm 62 in November and I want to enjoy myself, travel a little bit.
"I will still be involved in some way but it's been a great place and the time feels right. My good lady and I like going to Portugal, I still won't miss any City games but we've got a fantastic team here headed up by Mike Geary and a brilliant leadership team with the foundation. The club are fully on board with what we do so it's just a nice time to go.
"I wouldn't want to step away if the foundation was struggling financially or the club was struggling. I always like to go out when things are right and things are good."
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