FORMER Saints star Danny Wallace, now suffering from MS, has a well deserved benefit game at St Mary's tonight with an all-star cast due to support him. Here Bob Brunskell speaks to two of his former Dell colleagues...

Steve Moran still gets a sinking feeling in his stomach when he recalls the day his own misfortune presented Danny Wallace with his Saints' debut at Old Trafford.

Danny was just 16 when Lawrie McMenemy called him into the squad at Manchester United on November 29, 1980.

Wallace thought he was just going along for the ride, to experience the atmosphere of being with the first team squad for a big away match.

But Moran remembers: "I woke up in the middle of the night at the team hotel feeling very sick. "I'd eaten some fish for dinner and it must have been off because I was suddenly rushing to the bathroom to be sick," he said.

"I wasn't feeling much better in the morning when the boss gave me a fitness test. I was in no fit state to play so Danny got the nod over a lad called Wayne Pratt for my place, and he actually went out there and did pretty well in a 1-1 draw."

Sharp-shooter Moran, who went on to become a cult hero at The Dell, now works as a long distance lorry driver out of Hull where he has lived for over ten years.

But he's making the long journey to St Mary's tonight to pay his own tribute to his old team-mate.

"I suffer a bit from arthritis now," says Moran, "but I hope to play a few minutes for Danny.

"Not only were we team-mates in some of the best years for Saints, but Danny has a similar problem to my own sister, Suzie.

"Danny has MS and for many years we thought Suzie had the same. The symptoms were very similar but it turned out to be something different. But I think I know what Danny has been going through."

As a flying winger, Wallace helped set up the goals for Moran, who recalls the day when they both scored hat-tricks in April 1984.

"It was in an 8-2 win over Coventry and because I completed my hat-trick before Danny, I claimed the match ball.

"But in the dressing room the players got me to change my mind because it was Danny's first hat-trick and I'd got a few already.

"So Danny got to keep the ball and they found a spare one which the lads signed for me."

Moran added: "Danny was quick, he was exciting and he was unpredicable - a typical winger. He would do the hard things brilliantly but sometimes make some of the easy things look hard.

"Danny was very much a part of what was Saints' best ever sides and I hope he gets the good turn out he deserves.

"Last time we met was ten years ago when he was playing for Birmingham Reserves and I was playing for Hull Reserves - and he still had a bit of pace then."