When Brentford first made their move to sign Keane Lewis-Potter from Hull City, just as the Bees do with every signing, they wanted to dig deeper into the character of the then-21-year-old.

Technical director Lee Dykes explained that they usually use more orthodox methods to source this information; conversations with ex-coaches or former team-mates.

However, Dykes revealed that he used a slightly more unconventional technique to gain intelligence on Lewis-Potter: a conversation with some of his old school teachers.

So, in an attempt to find out what sort of reviews they might have given (which you’d imagine were all positive, as Brentford secured the signing of the forward in the summer of 2022), a chat with Lewis-Potter’s football team manager at St Mary’s College from Year 8 to Year 11, Mark Arridge, sheds light on what a teenage KLP was really like...

“Keane was a dedicated, committed, determined and self-confident footballer. He was always driven to win and, when he joined the Hull City Academy, he matured very quickly,” says Arridge.

“Keane was part of a good school football team who were Hull Schools Cup and League Champions and reached the finals of Humberside Schools Cup competitions. His school team reached the last 16 of the ESFA National Cup on a couple of occasions.

“In one of those cup games, against Priory Ruskin Academy, we won the game 5-3 and Keane scored four goals. One goal was especially memorable.

“As the ball was crossed from the right-hand side to Keane on the left, he had spotted the goalkeeper off his line. He lobbed the keeper on the half-volley from 25 yards - and he meant to do it!

“It’s a goal and a performance which is still spoken by the Priory Ruskin Academy member of staff when I have seen him at games since.

“Keane was always committed to being a professional footballer from the time he started the school in Year 7. That was his sole career aspiration.”

Lewis-Potter supports this notion, adding: "You get told in lessons, in class, something like under 1 per cent of lads actually end up playing football and you need to crack on with studying and whatnot. But, for me, it was just always football.

“It might sound bad now but I've never really had a plan if football didn't work out. I don't want to sound overconfident but that's just literally what I wanted to do.”

It’s fascinating listening to Lewis-Potter detail every moment of his journey from scoring in front of a few PE teachers in an ESFA National Cup game, to running down the wing at Gtech Community Stadium in the space of just a few years.

But it feels like a story told and a dream held by almost every young boy across the country and, like Lewis-Potter says, less than 1 per cent of academy players make it as a professional footballer.

So, where did Lewis-Potter’s footballing journey begin, and what were the key factors in him joining that extraordinarily elite 1 per cent club?

“I started playing football when I was about four, we had little training sessions - I was training with six-year-olds at that point”, Lewis-Potter recalls.

“I wasn't really allowed to train with the older players, but the coach at the time pushed me on and told me that I’m capable of doing it.

“I just loved football. I’d get home from playing on a Sunday and I’d go back, go out and play again, whether that be in the garden or in the street, just kicking balls about wherever I can.

“I've always had a football at my feet. I could have been anywhere and there’d be one by my side - it got me into a bit of trouble at times!

“I grew up watching a lot of [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [Wayne] Rooney and players like that. Just watching Ronaldo when he was at Manchester United the first time around, the skills he used to do were crazy.

“I think that's one of the reasons why I really fell in love with football, to be honest. I used to be glued to the TV watching him.

“And I now enjoy doing that on pitch myself, hoping to provoke that same reaction.”

Continuing to grow and develop, Lewis-Potter joined his local side Hessle Rangers and, as he pulled on the sky blue and white shirt in preparation for his debut (if you can still call it that at youth level), his dad thought a financial incentive was a good idea to encourage the budding forward.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

“He did something like £1 with my right foot, £2 with my left, £5 for a header,” Lewis-Potter chuckles.

“My first game, I scored nine goals and that stopped straight after that! I think we won 21-1, I scored nine in that game, and I never got any money from him for scoring ever again!”

If his dad had continued with his pay-as-you-score deal, Lewis-Potter would have earnt about £350 by the time the season came to its conclusion, as he netted 128 times, terrorising fellow children across the Humberside area every weekend.

He ended up scoring 300 times for Hessle Rangers by the time his 11th birthday rolled around: “I used to love it! Absolutely love it. I wish it was that easy now! Most games we would win like 9/10-0 and I’d score at least five or six goals.”

The Hull City grassroots scouts must not have believed their luck when they saw Lewis-Potter in action, especially upon finding out that he was a ball boy at the club and used to regularly visit the KC Stadium, with one of his first footballing memories being at Wembley Stadium, watching Dean Windass volley in Hull’s winner in the Championship play-off final in 2008.

But, despite the club first approaching the youngster at eight years old, and then every year after that, Lewis-Potter kept turning down approaches from his local side.

He explains: “I went on trial with one of my best friends and we both were both offered the chance to sign.

“We went just to see what the dynamics of academy football were like, but we both preferred playing with our Sunday League team at that age; we just wanted to enjoy playing with our friends.

“And then they kept trying to sign me. They’d come to my games on a Sunday, and when I started playing for my county they’d come and watch that as well.

“When I got to about 13, when things get a little bit more serious, that's when I decided to look at it properly. That’s when I considered that it could become an actual job and I accepted their offer of a six-week trial.”

Tony Pennock was Hull’s academy manager at the time and recalls the winger (who was used as a holding midfielder throughout much of those six weeks) coming to the club for that trial in 2014.

“I’d seen him train a couple of times and play one or two games”, Pennock - who subsequently worked with Lewis-Potter as a first-team coach during his breakthrough seasons with the Tigers - recalls.

“It was right at the end of his six-week trial that the coaches asked me what I thought of him - it was a bit undecided if we’d bring him in or not.

“The thing that seemed to go against him, and it’s a typical thing sometimes with certain players in football, was his size. 

“But I think the fact that he was a lot smaller than everybody else is the thing that caught my attention, actually. You’d think, ‘Oh, who’s the smaller kid in this team?’ Perhaps you pay more attention to those players. 

“Keano’s a tough boy, he’s a tough lad, but he was a lot smaller and a lot more frail back then. 

“But, technically, he just stood out. You could see straight away that he had the technique. And when you saw how quick he was, how technically gifted he was, he quickly stood out. 

“Keano’s also got that dog in him, which is something you don’t really see a lot of these days. They’re the type of players we wanted to give a chance to.

“He came in at 13 and he never looked back.” 

Lewis-Potter continued to progress through the youth ranks at the club, after being fast-tracked into Hull's under-18s and under-23s sides, where he impressed enough to earn a short-term loan move to Bradford Park Avenue in the National League North for the end of the 2018/19 campaign.

It was a difficult loan spell, where he only made five appearances, which included a start in their play-off eliminator defeat to Spennymoor Town, but he says it was a good opportunity to “experience the other side of things”.

Lewis-Potter got an opportunity to train with the first team earlier that season under Nigel Adkins, which left him “shellshocked”, as he aimed to learn from fellow academy product Jarrod Bowen and former Brentford loanee Jon Toral, as the senior squad battled it out in the Championship.

But, despite enjoying a pretty cushty career to date, Lewis-Potter experienced his first knock-back: “I got demoted back down to the under-23s and, at the time, it felt like a bit of a kick in the teeth.

“They wanted me to get better off the ball. As you get older and play more football, you realise it’s not all about keeping the ball and scoring goals; off the ball is just as important.

“But, thankfully, after a couple of months back there, I improved those things and I was back up with the first team again, which I was buzzing about.

“It was one of those things that made me want to work harder. I just worked on the things I needed to do even more and thankfully it all worked out.

“I’ve always tried to be someone who uses those sorts of things to drive me forward.”

Pennock adds: “He just wasn’t quite ready at that stage. But when he came back the second time, he was a different animal. He stepped up and became a big part of our squad.”

Lewis-Potter's progress didn’t go unnoticed. He made a string of substitute appearances during the 2019/20 campaign, after his league debut in a 1-0 defeat to West Brom in November of that season.

Deadline Day, 31 January 2020. Jarrod Bowen joins West Ham United. Kamil Grosicki joins West Bromwich Albion.

Hull had sold two of their best players, their creative and goalscoring outlets, and, despite signing James Scott from Motherwell and Marcus Maddison from Peterborough, they were now lacking that star quality in attacking areas.

So, for their next game, which came just the day after the window slammed shut, Lewis-Potter was handed his first start… against Thomas Frank’s Brentford.

“The day before that, I got told I would be starting the game. I told all my friends and family and they all managed to get there to watch,” Lewis-Potter recalls.

“I remember going into the game and being super nervous. I was up most of the night just thinking about the game, to be honest.

“When I was playing one of my first professional games and knowing it was on TV, at the time I was buzzing, knowing people are going to see me on Sky Sports.

“And then we got absolutely thrashed! I remember going in at half-time, we were 2-1 down, David [Raya] had just made a mistake to gift us a goal, and everyone was saying, ‘We’ve got a chance here, they’ve let us back in’.

“We went back out for the second half and got battered. It was literally goal, goal, goal - we couldn’t get near them.

“That day, David, Mathi [Jensen], Rico [Henry], Bryan [Mbeumo], Josh [Dasilva], Ethan [Pinnock] and Mads [Roerslev] were all in the squad, so a lot of the lads I played against are my team-mates now!

“We've spoken about the game and I remember saying to them that it was my first start and they just started laughing at me! But then I could always say to David about his little error, we joked about it.

“The front three made me realise how good this level was: Saïd [Benrahma], Ollie Watkins and Bryan.

“Saïd scored a hat-trick and was absolutely unbelievable. I remember going in at full-time and just wondering how that was possible!

“From getting absolutely thrashed to most of those guys being team-mates is actually really cool for me.”

And, from then, Lewis-Potter continued to feature regularly for the first team in the absence of Grosicki and Bowen, with manager Grant McCann “sitting the young players down and saying: ‘If you're good enough, you'll play’”, something Lewis-Potter wants to thank his former boss for doing.

But, despite playing on the opposite wing to the departed Bowen, the comparisons were already being made, with many fans expecting Lewis-Potter to fill the boots of the Hammers’ newest acquisition.

Pennock says: “When you take a 20-goal-a-season player out of your team, it’s a big hole to fill. And it was potentially hard on Keano for people to make those comparisons - they're different players.

“They’ve got some similar attributes: they’re good with the ball at their feet, they’re good when they’re running at people. 

“I think it was slightly unfair that people expected Keane to go and fill Jarrod’s boots.” 

That season ended in relegation to League One, with Hull experiencing something of a collapse during the final months.

It was a disappointing time for everyone at the club, understandably, but Lewis-Potter was keen to stay positive and, looking back, believes that it was one of the “best things that could have happened”.

The forward made 43 appearances in the third tier, scoring 13 times and assisting six, as the Tigers won immediate promotion back to the Championship.

Lewis-Potter also cleaned up at the end-of-season awards, as he won Players’ Player of the Year, Manager’s Player of the Year and Supporters’ Player of the Year for his outstanding contributions in the title-winning term.

He carried that momentum and good form into the following season, where he missed just two minutes of Hull’s entire Championship campaign, netting 12 times and providing three assists as his side finished 19th, comfortably surviving relegation.

Just like when he was banging in the goals for Hessle Rangers at 11, his top form wasn’t going unnoticed.

Numerous Premier League clubs were being linked with Lewis-Potter, but it was Brentford who pipped their divisional rivals to the signing of the talented 21-year-old on a six-year-deal.

On his move to the Bees, he explains: “For me, Brentford were always the front runners and always in the front of my mind. It’s the way the club has developed over the past five/six/seven years, as well as consistently developing players.

“There were a couple of other clubs in for me, but as soon as I found out Brentford were interested, it was an easy choice.

“I spoke to Thomas [Frank], Phil [Giles] and Lee [Dykes] about how they saw me as a player, how they saw me fitting in, nit-picking at every little thing that I’m good at and what I need to improve on - little things I wouldn’t even think of myself.

“When someone goes into that much depth, it shows they really want you. Including under-21 games, they had been to over 150 of my games, which was just mind-blowing.”

16 months after move to west London, Keane admits it’s been a “challenging” and “frustrating” time for him, which has been stop-start due to injuries.

Sat across from the diminutive attacker, I point out the eye-catching scar on his knee, which came from surgery on an injury he picked up during an in-house training game at Jersey Road.

Lewis-Potter cheekily smiles, as you’ll usually catch him do when you see him around the Robert Rowan Performance Centre: “Yep, it’s a big old thing, isn’t it?

“I had surgery in February - I literally couldn’t move for a while, then I was on crutches for about a month, and then I gradually started walking again.

“I got a foot injury in the early part of last season, recovered from that, and then had my knee injury.

“I'd never experienced being out of football for that long; I'd be lying if I said I was perfectly fine. I wasn’t.

“At first, they thought I’d be out for a couple of weeks. But when I was first told that I was getting surgery and I spoke to the surgeon, that’s when it hit home.

“The first bit was the most challenging part, getting my head around not playing for the rest of the season, knowing it was going to be five months until I was back to normal again was tough.

“I told my parents and they were both quite upset. They tried to hide it so it didn’t make me feel worse. But I could sense that everyone I spoke to was just gutted for me.”

Another knock (calf) saw Keane miss five Premier League games, before he returned for the 1-0 defeat to Arsenal, before setting up Shandon Baptiste for the Bees' third goal in a 3-1 win over Luton Town.

Hopefully now clear of all of those problems, Brentford supporters will be looking forward to seeing the winger and his, what I assumed, was God-given talent back at Gtech Community Stadium.

But that’s doing Keane a disservice, when you speak to people that have worked with him throughout his life. It’s not just his technique that has taken him to the top - there are thousands of young footballers who have talent.

To be in that 1 per cent, you need much more than just ability.

Pennock concludes: “Keane always wanted to listen, he always wants to develop. His work away from the grass, in the gym, has made Keane the player he is now. 

“He’s an absolute pleasure to work with, you could work with him all day long.”