PLAYMAKER Ryan Christie revealed how he could have joined Cherries “seven or eight years ago” as the club originally tried to sign him as a youngster.

The Inverness-born star has enjoyed an impressive start to his career at Vitality Stadium, helping Scott Parker’s side secure promotion from the Championship back to the Premier League.

But Christie admitted he was asked to take a look at Cherries’ setup previously, while he was starting out at his boyhood club.

Asked during last season about Cherries’ previous interest in him, the 27-year-old told the Daily Echo: “I was very young, just kind of starting out with Inverness. I think I had made a handful of appearances for the first team.

“I wasn’t really told that much about it. I was still pretty young and just concentrating on my football.

“My dad kind of said they had put an offer in to Inverness and I was invited down to see the training ground and setup and everything.

“But at that point, I had barely started playing for Inverness. It was my boyhood club and I just wanted to make a mark with Inverness basically, before I looked elsewhere.

“I said no at the time and stayed to play some first-team football, get my feet into football properly.

“Even from little things like that, you just feel you have a bit of an affiliation with a club moving forward and over seven or eight years down the line – here we are.

“It was nice when I signed and a few people from up top brought that up and said ‘seven years later but we finally got it over the line’.

“So, it’s nice, it kind of makes it feel like it was meant to be a little bit.”

Instead of joining Cherries in the fledgling stages of his career, Christie went on to help Scottish giants Celtic win back-to-back domestic trebles, as well as play in Europe.

But now he is settled on the south coast having signed on transfer deadline day last summer, he credited Cherries’ technical director Richard Hughes, a fellow Scotland international, with getting the move completed.

“Rich was absolutely brilliant in terms of getting it over the line this time,” said Christie.

“Obviously it’s very stressful when it comes to the last few days of the window but he was amazing.

“It was nice to hear, he was telling me all the times he came up and watched me all those years ago when I was playing for Inverness – and he was up in Scotland watching me.

“It’s nice to hear when people are investing time to come and see you play.

“It’s now on my shoulders to repay them.”