Robert Earnshaw - Early Life

Early Life

Earnshaw, was born on the outskirts of the north central Zambian mining town of Mufulira on 6 April 1981. When he was five, his family moved to Malawi where David Earnshaw took charge of another coal mine and his youngest son began school. Again, the family's stay was to be a short one. In September 1990, following the death of her husband, Rita moved the Earnshaw family to Bedwas, a small Welsh town to the north of Cardiff, where they lived initially with her sister. Earnshaw still has a house there.

"It was the first time I had been away from Africa." he recalls. "It was just completely different, from one extreme to another. It was much colder as well, just every little thing was different, everyone spoke English over here and although I could speak a little bit I had to learn. But when you're a kid you just get on with it."

It was in Wales that he began playing football, kicking a ball around with friends between and after classes at Cardinal Newman RC School, Pontypridd, the school he moved on to after a spell at St. Helen's Primary. Cardinal Newman's was a rugby union-playing school so Earnshaw's first organised football match came at the age of 12 with local youth side Llanbradach. "We didn't win anything, we weren't the best," he says. "I only played one year and then I moved to GE Wales, which was a better team and we won a few local titles. I scored a lot of goals, 80 one season, 60 another when I was 14, 15, 16." It was at one of his childhood matches aged 14 that he adopted his acrobatic frontflip celebration, one of the reasons he is well known.