HINDSIGHT maybe but it made for a tasty soundbite earlier this week.

With Jamie Vardy-mania reaching fever pitch, Mark Bower was asked on TV for his memories of their time in the same Halifax team.

Bower revealed that he had recommended the striker to a league club but they decided “he wasn’t for them.”

When pushed, the Guiseley boss admitted the club that had turned down Vardy was City.

So the Bantams had rejected a future England international … Cue foot-stamping in a few quarters.

On the face of it, the £150,000 that Fleetwood paid for Vardy in the summer of 2011 looks peanuts.

As it turned out, the Bantams were forced to fork out more for Mark Stewart – the striker who never scored – after the Court of Arbitration got involved.

But let’s re-examine the facts.

By all accounts, Peter Jackson had been mad keen on bringing Vardy to Valley Parade and watched him on numerous occasions.

He wasn’t the only one. It was a running joke at the Shay at the time that there would be more scouts in the stand than fans.

Huddersfield were another who took a good look but Lee Clark didn’t see him as “the right type”.

City’s situation was different. They simply couldn’t afford Vardy.

They didn’t have the money to pay the £60,000 that Halifax were originally asking; let alone two-and-a-half times that.

Splashing out on a part-timer from the Northern Premier League was simply out of the question.

The owners had just bought the club offices to stave off the threat of relocating to Odsal. Times were tight.

But they did instead have a raw lad who had failed to make the grade at Carlisle and came in for next to nothing.

And Nahki Wells would move on for more than Fleetwood got from Leicester for Vardy.

You win some, you lose some.