Researching Steve Wilkinson

Wilkinson began his career at Leicester City, where he climbed through the ranks and signed a professional contract in September 1986. He only played a handful of games for Leicester, and had a loan spell at Crewe Alexandra before he was sold to Mansfield Town in September 1989 for a £80,000 transfer fee – a club record at the time. He scored on his Mansfield debut on 3 October 1989 in a League Cup match against Luton Town, and finished the season as Mansfield's top scorer with 15 league goals.

His arguably finest moment in a Mansfield shirt came on 3 April 1990, when Wilkinson scored all five goals in Mansfield's 5–2 victory against Birmingham City. The following season, Wilkinson's goals could not prevent Mansfield from being relegated from Division Three. However, largely thanks to the 40 league goals scored by Wilkinson and his strike partner Phil Stant, Mansfield bounced straight back up in 1991–92, only to be relegated the next season again.

In 1994–95, Wilkinson had his most productive season, scoring 26 league goals, including a hat-trick against arch-rivals Chesterfield, as Mansfield reached the playoffs. However, the Stags missed out on promotion, losing 6–3 on aggregate against Chesterfield in the playoff semifinal. Later that summer, Wilkinson was sold to Preston North End for £100,000. Overall, in all competitions, Wilkinson scored 91 goals for Mansfield, which places him third on the club's all-time scoring list behind Harry Johnson and Ken Wagstaff.

Wilkinson spent two seasons at Preston, where he scored 18 goals and added a Division Three championship medal to his collection, before moving back to the East Midlands in July 1997, when he joined Chesterfield. He spent three seasons at Chesterfield, scoring 15 goals, before retiring from the game in 2000. He now lives in Loughborough and teaches in the sports department of Loughborough College

Wilkinson played as a right-handed opening or middle-order batsman. He appeared in second eleven matches for Middlesex in 1967 and then for Somerset in Minor Counties second eleven games in 1971. After one limited-overs appearance for the Somerset first team in 1971, he played nine first-class matches in 1972, batting mostly at No 3. He scored consistently but not prolifically, and passed 50 only twice in all of his 18 first-class matches, both times in his first season. In his second match, he made 69 against Surrey at The Oval, putting on 157 for the second wicket with Roy Virgin. In his next match he made 50 against Essex. But thereafter his highest first-class score was only 33. He was out of form in first-class cricket in 1973, though made his highest limited-overs score, 70, in the match against Gloucestershire at Somerset's ground in Bristol, the Imperial Athletic Ground, that year. He played only a handful of matches in 1974 and left the Somerset staff at the end of the season.

Wilkinson's batting style was upright, orthodox and technically correct – too correct for his captain, Brian Close: according to one report, Close told him "You play too straight lad", though that was after a straight drive from Wilkinson had got Close run out at the bowler's end.