KEVIN Ball has made millions of tackles in a 21-year career. But the uncompromising defensive midfielder is famous for only one, especially in these parts.

Type the ex-Clarets’ name into YouTube and you will be offered clips entitled ‘Kevin Ball Scores A Beauty For Sunderland Against’ and ‘Kevin Ball diving against Chelsea in 1996’, among others.

Yet none have as many hits as the snippet simply titled ‘Kevin Ball’.

The subtitle ‘Here comes the BOOM!’ pretty much sums up the 30-second video for the 13,911 viewers to date.

For in just that short space of time, Ball’s infamous tackle on David Dunn in the pre-Christmas Championship clash of 2000 is shown five times, from three different angles.

Ball lunges in with both feet at roughly knee height either side of Dunn’s legs, Dunn flips over the top of him and lands in a heap, miraculously unscathed.

But there are only half-hearted appeals to the referee before the Ball is consigned to his fate and makes his way towards the baying visiting fans for an early bath.

“On the night my son said: ‘I thought you got the ball dad’. My wife felt I should have been arrested for it!,” said the 44-year-old, who only recently saw the incident again by accident.

“I hadn’t watched it for years, but we were going down to London on the train with the youth team for a cup game and I heard one of them say ‘Did you see that? That’s him!’,” revealed Ball, who is now assistant Academy manager at Sunderland, where he enjoyed a 10-year playing career in the 1990s.

“They’d YouTubed me on a laptop and were watching the tackle.

“I look at it now ... it wasn’t the best of challenges at the time. But I’ve paid my dues for it. It was one of those things.

“At the time, it’s the competitive edge in myself coming out, and I love it.”

And Ball admitted Dunn, who will play in Sunday’s first ever Premier League East Lancashire derby, could not have reacted better in the aftermath.

“Dunny was absolutely fantastic. He carried on, he wasn’t maimed,” said the one-time Black Cats caretaker boss.

“I didn’t see him after the game because I had to go on television; Stan Ternent has asked me to say sorry. I was a skin-head 36-year-old, so I guess it hadn’t looked good.

“I never had the opportunity to speak to David, but a few weeks later we bumped into each other on a night out and he was brilliant.

“Dunny realised it was in the game.

“It’s easy at the end of a match to kick off rather than do it in the 90 minutes, but there were no hard feelings.”

Of his hard-man image, Ball added: “People seem to think because you give it out you can’t take it, but many a time I had stitches, black eyes ... when I went into tackles I was committed.”

Ball will be an interested observer when league rivalries are renewed on Sunday, with Ewood Park staging the first meeting.

Having experience north east and East Lancashire encounters, he is reluctant to reveal which he found the most fiercely contested, but said: “Every derby is the most important one to that particular set of fans.

“We like our derbies in the north east, so I was so pleased when Burnley got promoted because it brings that rivalry back again.”