ANDY Awford is hoping that Kevin Ball will return to the Clarets line-up and face Portsmouth's Croatian star Robert Prosinecki at Turf Moor on Saturday.

Pompey's chief scout used to clean Kevin Ball's boots at Fratton Park and he said: "I can imagine the sort of reception Bally will have lined up for Robbie -- if he can get near him!

"It is not a question of Bally being too slow to catch him, Robbie is not the quickest.

"It is just that I have seen him roll his foot over the ball in training so often and just leave players standing -- he is brilliant."

Awford has been chief scout for the club he joined as a 16-year-old since he was forced into premature retirement at the age of 29 last season.

The last of his 313 games for the south coast club was almost exactly a year ago against Queens Park Rangers and he is full of admiration for the Clarets experienced midfielder who was in the Portsmouth midfield when he broke into the first team as a teenager was back in the 80s.

Ball will be 37 on Monday but his appetite for the game remains undiminished after more than 500 league games during a career at Pompey, Sunderland, Fulham and now Burnley.

"Bally has always been a fit lad, a model pro," said Awford.

"He has looked after himself and trained hard. I don't know if it is something to do with being at Sunderland.

"They have got another player there, Niall Quinn, who is still going strong.

"I do remember that I used to clean his boots when I was a lad - and he never gave me a tip back then. I established myself as an apprentice back in 1987 and had one or two seasons in the first team squad with him.

"I still know him and like him. We speak sometimes and I saw him come on as sub against Gillingham when I was scouting the other week."

Awford is expecting Saturday's match to be an exciting affair between two sides who are upwardly mobile after a long spell in the doldrums.

"They are both near the top of the table and for a change we are looking up rather than looking down," he claimed. "The last few seasons we have not been out of the bottom six.

"But since Harry (Redknapp) and Graham (Rix) came here in the summer there has been a good buzz about the place and it is a credit to them and the chairman (Milan Mandaric) that we have brought a player like Prosinecki here.

"There is no doubt he has won us games this season and he is known world wide."

It was not any one injury that forced Awford to retire from the professional game -- he still enjoys a match in the local league on a Sunday morning -- rather it was an accumulation of knocks.

"My body was just telling me I could not go on," he said. "I broke my leg as a youngster, I had cartilage and medial ligament problems, a bad back and a bad knee that has got a pin it.

"But I still managed to have 13 years in the game and that would be like someone starting at 20 and finishing at 33, so I had a good career."