Even after reaching the final six of Sky's Football Icon reality show - and being rapidly promoted from the youth team to the first team at Croydon Athletic as a result - at 18, Moses Emmanuel (formerly Moses Ademola) was still not sure if making a living from football lay ahead in his future.

He scored 19 goals in the Isthmian League Division One South in 2007/08, which led to trials at professional clubs including Fulham and Cardiff, but when nothing came of those opportunities, he decided university was the next best option.

But before he had started to submit applications, an invitation from Brentford changed everything.

“I had a lot of people watching me,” Emmanuel – now 35 - says.

“The owners of the club and the manager were keeping things to themselves; I think they were communicating with my mum, not really telling me too much because of my age.

“I was just playing football; they told me where to go, when there were trials or teams that wanted me.

“I was invited down for a trial game at Brentford and I scored maybe one or two goals. When I walked off, I thought I'd had an okay game, but I went into a meeting, had a sit down with Andy Scott and Terry Bullivant, and they told me they were going to offer me a contract!”

The deal started the following season, allowing south Londoner Emmanuel to finish studying sports business at college and continue playing for Croydon, but also train with the Bees on days off.

He joined full-time in the summer of 2008 and quickly became aware that professional football was a whole new prospect altogether.

“The fitness levels were clear from day one of pre-season and that’s when I realised that I'd made the step up," he continues.

“It was intense, but I was younger, so I was able to manage to keep up, though there was a big difference from what I'd come from. I think I'd stepped up four or five leagues.

“The professionalism was so clear to see from the players that I was in and around at the time, like Kevin O'Connor, who did the right things all the time.”

Emmanuel made his debut as a late replacement for Marvin Williams in the 1-0 defeat to Bury on the opening day of the season.

“I can't forget that!” he says. “I was probably playing in front of 100 or even under 100 fans a week, where I was at Croydon.

“Then, in my first game, the stadium’s full, all the accents are different - I was a young boy who probably hadn't been out of London many times! It was an experience and something I’ll always remember.”

He came on in six of the first eight league games and played twice in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy but found first-team appearances hard to come by thereafter and was shipped out on loan to Welling of the Conference South at the end of the year, where he played four times before his recall.

Brentford’s eventual title triumph was starting to take shape, and there was little room in the team for an untested teenager when experienced pros were doing the business.

“The season before I came in, Brentford were a midtable team; the season where I came in, they were the best team in the league! It was one extreme to the other!” he says with a smile.

“It probably would have been better for me to sign for a midtable team that needed a little bit more help from young legs.”

Even when the striker’s curse hit Scott’s team and ended the seasons of Charlie MacDonald, Nathan Elder, Jordan Rhodes, Damian Spencer and Billy Clarke, Emmanuel did not get a look in. He holds no grudges.

“I was very young at the time and Andy Scott was very much focused on the team and the promotion charge, which I totally understand, so it wasn't as easy for him to bed me in that year with the team always under pressure to make sure they got over the line.

“We had players who were well capable of doing the job, but being around the promotion was amazing.

“I really appreciated Andy putting me on in that last game of the season against Luton. The place was buzzing and I had a lot of my friends and family in the stands. What a day.”

It was to be his 11th and final appearance in a Brentford shirt.

“I worked hard in the off-season, then I started off pre-season really well,” he continues.

“But you could tell the levels had increased even more ahead of the League One campaign.

"We’d signed stronger and better players, probably more established players than what we had.

“Woking had been enquiring about me the whole summer, so near the end of it I ended up going there on loan for half a season and, in the January, it was made permanent. It just worked well for all parties.”

Since then, the majority of Emmanuel’s career has been spent in the National League and National League South, in both full and part-time capacities.

After Woking, he went on to play for Eastleigh, Dover Athletic, Canvey Island, Bromley, Sutton United, Maidenhead United, Welling for the second time, Wealdstone and Hayes & Yeading.

He is now in his second spell at Billericay Town, whom he plays for while balancing a job coaching in schools, delivering PE after-school clubs and holiday camps.

Was there ever a chance to get back into the EFL at any point?

“With perspective, I've made some decisions that probably, given an opportunity again, I'd probably change,” he admits.

“I had the opportunity at one stage during my time at Bromley - when I was doing really well in the National League - to go to Barnsley, but I turned it down to hold out for other things, though nothing actually came after.

“When I think about it now, it's quite silly the opportunities that I let slip through my fingers, but you live and you learn.”

When asked how he reflects on his time at Brentford, Emmanuel is impressively honest.

“When I look back now, I probably didn't understand the opportunity I had. Up until that point, football had just been fun for me, so I didn't really understand the work of it and that it is basically business.

“At Croydon, I was just going to play football. It was literally going to play football, score goals, have fun and go home. I didn't actually see it as a job.

“Brentford was a transitional period where I didn't actually understand that it was a full-time job, that you have to come and work hard and do your thing.

"I’d just been so used to relying on my talent to get the job done on a Saturday. That's the honest truth.”

Even so, he says the short time he spent in west London has shaped the rest of his life and career so far.

“Honestly, it was something I needed and something that helped me,” he adds.

“Who knows how I would have been as a person in my life if I'd gone to uni and done something that I didn't actually really want to do?

“Brentford was the main thing that actually made everything happen the way it's happened so far, which I'm happy for. I'll always be grateful to Brentford. It's the grounding of everything that made everything possible.”