Last updated 11:48, Saturday, 15 November 2008

Any day now a reporter will trot down to Blackburn Rovers’ training ground and elicit a bundle of confused quotes from a coach or director.

Take that: Matt Jansen as a teenager blasting in a goal for Carlisle United in 1997. Now he’s back at Blackburn trying to rebuild his career at the age of 31

“We don’t know where he’s gone,” the baffled interviewee will mutter into a dictaphone. “Looked great while he was here, but we haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks.” And the subject of this perplexed monologue will be Matthew Brooke Jansen, the soaring enigma of Cumbrian football.

Apologies for glancing into the future through cynical lenses. Jansen probably deserves a more respectful hearing as he tugs on his boots in Lancashire and tries for one last time to reawaken one of this county’s most stunning talents.

The heart normally kicks at the slightest prospect of Jansen skipping back onto a football pitch to share his gifts again, even now that the seemingly ageless kid from Wetheral has hit 31.

But the emotions had to remain in neutral this week as news of his attempted Ewood Park return hit the wires.

It’s for his own sake as much as ours that his latest comeback is greeted with scepticism, as opposed to the heaving expectation which greeted his previous stab at becoming a pedigree footballer again, when Jansen pitched up at Brunton Park in the summer of 2007 and trained with Neil McDonald’s United squad for a week before suddenly retreating into the shadows.

That time, hopes were skyscraper-high, not just among fans and newspapers like ours who slapped huge pictures of the man on the front page when his quiet return crept into the public domain.

I remember quite vividly a conversation with a Blues player that summer who, having seen Jansen at close quarters for a couple of days, claimed: “If we sign him, we’ll win the league. The things he’s been doing are unbelievable.”

Then, in a puff of blue smoke, he was gone (to widespread dejection), later to reappear at charity golf days, Masters tournaments and then the opening of an extension at his old school.

It was at such a function, at Cumwhinton last month, that Jansen revealed he was devoting his time to “property development and currency dealing”. So maybe his attempted return to Blackburn this week is simply a form of insurance against the economic downturn.

Smart move, if so. More likely, however, is that the old game’s addictive qualities haven’t fully escaped his system, along with the feeling that a return to serious professional action would be in defiance of the hideous motorbike crash he suffered on holiday in 2002, which sent his career on the slide just as England caps were about to drop into his lap.

Jansen’s story always provokes stronger waves of sympathy than most because it was such a natural brilliance which was sabotaged by fate on that cruel day in Rome. Mention his name in most corners of this city, a certain district in south London or anywhere in Blackburn and the description you’ll get back is one of a dazzling athlete who left Carlisle, Crystal Palace and Blackburn Rovers with unperishable memories.

That’s why we’re always so anxious to see him back on the grass, restored. But it needs to mean as much to Jansen, now unquestionably a wealthy man, as it does to us if his comeback is to carry any meaning.

He never had to prove his talent, but maybe now it is the desire to drain every drop out of that lingering talent, by putting in the hardest and most consistent yards on the training pitch and then the main arena at a club whose motto is Arte et Labore (“by skill and labour”) that we are entitled to scrutinise.

Mervyn Day, the manager who game Jansen his senior debut at Carlisle back in 1997, told a tale yesterday which answered plenty of queries on the boy’s willingness to withstand the game’s toughest demands – but posed another profound question.

Day recalled: “It was my last game in charge, at Blackpool, and I remember Matt being flattened off the ball by one of their players, Gary Brabin. And I mean flattened.

“The kid was almost knocked out. But he got up after a couple of minutes of not knowing where he was, got on with the game, and played really well.

“Matt was an exceptional player, but he wasn’t intimidated by physical aggression from anybody, either. I don’t know how affected he has been psychologically by his accident, but he is a nice kid with a natural talent. I hope he can still fulfil some of his dreams.”

The question that hangs, of course – and it is asked with the greatest respect – is whether Jansen’s readiness to subject himself to football’s most competitive obligations is in any way intact, post-crash. It’s one Greg Abbott would certainly be permitted to air if Jansen responds favourably to the caretaker manager’s claim that “the door is always open” at Brunton Park, should the player fancy a return to his football roots.

Abbott was entitled to make such an offer this week, but there’s a more significant event in his diary than the imaginary morning when an local hero trots back into town.

Monday, November 17. FA Youth Cup round two. Accrington Stanley v Carlisle United. In other words: finding the next Matt Jansen, rather than rehabilitating this one.