'I was the next George Best but quit football at 23 to be a Jehovah's Witness instead'

Dubbed as the ‘next George Best’, many would’ve expected Peter Knowles’ career as a professional to have gone in a different direction. Instead, the maverick footballer was retired at 23 years old.

Born in West Yorkshire, Knowles is perhaps best known for his seven-year stint with Wolves. He featured over 170 times for the Midlands outfit during his short football career and finished up with an impressive 61 goals.

But it was his off-field antics that left the biggest impression on his peers, with Harry Redknapp describing his experience of room sharing with Knowles like “being shacked up with Keith Moon”. Recalling his time with the forward in his autobiography, Redknapp stated: “In his playing days he was a lunatic.

“He was renowned for pranks. He drove me mad. I got stuck with him, really, because nobody else wanted to share his room. He was wild. Flash, too. He would sit on the ball, or beat his man and deliberately go back and beat him again. I remember him getting George Best sent off once, by tripping over his own feet,” the very player he was often likened to.

Suffice to say, Knowles didn’t finish with the same reputation - either on the pitch or off it - as counterpart Best, who was regarded as one of the best players - and drinkers - of his generation. In fact, by the age 23, he’d hung up his boots to become a Jehovah's Witness instead.

Explaining the peculiar shift in lifestyle, he told religious magazine Watchtower: “My father had been a popular, well-respected man, just 42 years of age, when he died of cancer. I could still remember the wave of bitterness that swept over me as I stood by his grave.

“Just two weeks later my baby sister died. My mother was broken-hearted. And I could not forget how, as an 11-year-old boy, I had walked up the stairs with the dead infant in my arms and laid it on the bed. Why had these things happened?”