In my mind (at least) he is my first memory of a loan player scoring against his parent club whilst on loan at Portsmouth from Newcastle and hence the rules were changed that loan players couldn’t play against their parent clubs.
It might have happened previous to that but there was probably a lot less division to division loans (or possible they weren’t even allowed) before then plus you could only do a maximum of 3 months (I think)
Can work both ways, Leigh Barnard was sent out on loan to Exeter by Macari in his first season in charge.
In the game between Swindon and Exeter Barnard heavily tackled Macari 3 or 4 times which Macari liked, Barnard came back to Swindon and became a regular in the next 2 seasons under Macari.
Back then most of our loans came from teams in the same division, we got lucky with Macaris links with Man Utd though and that got us a few loans from them of their youth but for a Div 4 side that was very unusual to get a top team loaning you kids.
We always used to sign loan players from Rovers, City, Tranmere, Bolton etc who were all in the same division as us at the time.
Not sure when the rule was changed that you couldnt play against your parent club though.
Also many loans back then were just for a single month and we never signed loan players for more than about 3 months at most before we bought them, a sort of try before you buy deal.