It is fair to say that the diminutive individual who provided the FA Cup's most iconic giant-killing moment 30 years ago this week was a more complicated soul than most.
Eight days after his searing free-kick for Wrexham helped sink Arsenal in that third-round tie on January 4, 1992, Mickey Thomas was arrested for his part of a counterfeit money scam. He ran out for the fourth round at West Ham to a ticker tape welcome of Monopoly money.
But one of the lesser appreciated aspects of Thomas is how very seriously he always viewed any perceived slight on his own team-mates. That January day in North Wales against George Graham's champions goes to prove it.
Wrexham, who'd wound up bottom of the Football League the previous season and been spared the non-League because there was no relegation, had signed a few old-timers to strengthen the ranks, including the 36-year-old Gordon Davies, who was and still is Fulham's record goal-scorer.
It was Thomas' view that Arsenal's Nigel Winterburn was taking some delight in mocking Davies' seniority, including 'running towards Gordon like an old man to give him the ball' when Wrexham had just won that fateful free-kick. 'I didn't like it,' says Thomas. 'I was there thinking "What a p*** taker."'
The video evidence is slightly inconclusive. Winterburn certainly stoops rather oddly as he hands Davies the ball. But Thomas, who was 35 himself, decided that he must inflict instant revenge by taking the free-kick himself.
He'd also tried one from about the same range in training two days earlier. That one was by no means on target 'I think it's still going round the universe,' he says now, but he fancied this one.
His young team-mate Waynne Phillips fancied the kick, too, but Thomas wasn't having it. 'When we won that free-kick I'd barely touched the ball when Mickey said: "Leave it to me",' Phillips told the latest issue of Wrexham magazine Fearless in Devotion for one of a number of interviews marking this week's anniversary. 'I wasn't going to argue with him.'
The rest is history, of course. Though FA Cup third-round weekend is the most evocative of the English football calendar, no moment of euphoria is recalled quite like Wrexham's.
The gulf in class - the Football League's best v worst of 1990-91 - contributed substantially to it.
Half an hour before kick-off, the mood in Wrexham's dressing room seemed so oppressive that Davies wandered over to the tea urn, filled a plastic cup with tea and walked back to his seat pretending to shake the cup and spill the liquid all over the place. 'I'm an experienced player and I'm not nervous at all,' he declared. The dressing room dissolved into laughter.
The anxiety was understandable given how the first half went. Paul Merson capitalised on their lack of personnel down the right before easing past defender Mark Sertori to set up
