When David Beckham made his mark...

What connects a global celebrity who was one of England's greatest ever football players and little old Doncaster Rovers?

Making his mark within minutes (Photo: Unknown)

Saturday 4th March 1995 is a date which is a long time ago now; over a quarter of a century in fact, so there's every probability you might not have a clue what happened on that day.

In the UK, Celine Dion's Think Twice topped the singles charts, someone scooped a whopping £8.8 million on the newly-created National Lottery, whilst Manchester United put nine goals without reply past Ipswich Town; Andy Cole scoring five of them, to set a Premier League record which remains to this day.

The first chapter of what would be another great story in the footballing world, however, was being written elsewhere in Lancashire.

Only a few days earlier, one of the youngsters on the books at Old Trafford had made an unremarkable month-long loan move to Third Division side Preston North End in a bid to gain some much-needed first team experience. He'd signed a modest £400 p/w contract for the duration, which included an extra £50 if he made an appearance. Accommodation and expenses were also covered.

The lad in question was a young David Beckham.

The matchday programme from Beckham's league debut.

As stated in his autobiography years later, he was reluctant to make the loan switch initially as he perceived it that Alex Ferguson was trying to get rid of him. No doubt, when he saw the scoreline from Old Trafford afterwards, he probably wondered just how on earth he'd ever break into United's team.

Beckham's afternoon was far different to the one enjoyed by his parent club as a modest 9,764 turned out at Deepdale to see the Lilywhites host struggling Doncaster Rovers.

The youngster was named on the substitutes bench, but was introduced for what would be his league debut at half-time replacing Paul Raynor (who now acts as Steve Evans' assistant - and is probably the exact polar opposite to Beckham in every way possible) after Graeme Jones' header put Rovers into a 1-0 half-time lead.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long for young Beckham to make an impression as his first corner-kick caused all manner of problems before his second caught the wind and flew directly over Rovers' 'keeper Perry Suckling before ending up in the back of the net to put PNE back on level terms.

He rejuvenated Preston's overall performance and played a minor role in their second goal as Simon Davey was on target, but Sammy Chung's Rovers at least salvaged a point thanks to Russ Wilcox's late header.

Beckham's positive showing led to more game-time and after scoring one of his trademark free-kicks against Fulham only a week later, he made a handful of appearances before going back to Old Trafford and... the rest is history!

Doncaster Rovers, however, will forever be the answer to the quiz question: 'Which team did David Beckham score against on his Football League debut?'

Deepdale as it appeared during Beckham's loan spell (Photo: Unknown)