On the same afternoon in March 2019, two young footballers were scoring goals in front of a few hundred supporters in the lower reaches of English non-league football. Neither player could have imagined that, seven years on, they would be celebrating promotion to the Premier League as key architects of Coventry City's Championship triumph.

Brandon Thomas-Asante, then 20, netted for Oxford City in a 5-3 National League South defeat against Hampton & Richmond Borough — watched by roughly 500 spectators. Barely an hour away, a 19-year-old Ephron Mason-Clark was on the scoresheet for Barnet in a 2-1 National League loss to Gateshead in front of a little over 650 fans.

A decade in the making

Fast forward to the 2025-26 Championship season, and the pair combined for 36 goals between them to fire the Sky Blues back into the top flight for the first time in 25 years. Their contribution on the final home game of the campaign — when they combined for the opener, with Mason-Clark teeing up Thomas-Asante, and both men found the net — felt like poetic justice.