Professional football is different, unique, its career path the most competitive in all sport. Nor is it commonly associated with Cambridge graduates. In distant times, when amateur and professional shared the same football fields, you'd find the odd former Blue mixing it with the pros, but Palmer is alone among Britain's 3,000-odd full-time footballers in carrying Hons Cantab on his cv. He acknowledges that it was initially met with curiosity in the dressing-rooms of Ipswich Town and Watford, the two clubs at which he has spent seven seasons since graduation.
'It's true that it's not the conventional route into the game,' he says. 'Most footballers will have come into it through a Youth Training Scheme at sixteen. I'm a little bit different from most players.' Few of them, for instance, finish training and pass their weekday afternoons working for a software company to build a second career for when sport's brief sinecure fades.
Palmer knows he's been lucky, but he's been dedicated, too. First, he was never going to sacrifice his talents. 'I always knew I wanted to be a footballer, but I was well advised that I should take my education as far as I could.' Which meant combining the rigours of an engineering degree with the captaincy of the University soccer team and regular training with Cambridge United while in his third year at Christ's. Palmer the cricketer even found time to represent the University at first-class level.
The luck came with the interest shown in his ability by a club who were growing in stature and about to play a part in the beginning of a revolution that has turned around the national game in the last five years. 'The offer of a trial with Ipswich came a bit out of the blue,' he says. And it came via the Light Blues and their annual friendly match with the Suffolk club.
Ipswich were sufficiently impressed with Palmer to offer the University midfield player a trial. At the time, they were in the second division. By the time Palmer established himself there after coming down, they were winning promotion to England's new Premier League - football's millionaire's row. 'The first-year was about making my way,' he recalls. 'I was on a one-year contract and managed to get into the first team in the middle of September. The next season, they renewed the contract and the year after that was our promotion year. That's been the best part so far.'
And what a journey. From concentrating a year's effort around the Varsity match to playing against Manchester United at Old Trafford, against Liverpool at Anfield. 'Professional sport is so far removed from amateur sport,' he says. 'When you're first making your way it really is quite a daunting thing to go out in front of 15,000 or 20,000 people calling you whatever they want to call you. It's that, I think, that stands in the way of a lot of very talented players, who really find it difficult to perform in front of people.
'When you're young you are affected by it and by things like what journalists write about you. A lot of football is about confidence. You try to relax into it. The longer I went on, the more naturally I played.'
So much for the upside, the adrenalin of the occasion, and the benefits of a profession with superstar salaries. Palmer, 28, has known a little of the downside, too. An injury a few years ago cost him the best part of a season, and the lot of a pro means a lifestyle which, at times, confronts independent instincts with a jolt.
When, for instance, Watford offered to pay Ipswich £ 135,000 to recruit Palmer, he could have been forgiven for wondering if he would be allowed a say. 'The first I knew about it was when I was called into the manager's office to be told an offer had been made for me. It all happens very quickly, just thirty-six hours later I was signing for Watford. You have to accept that when you become a footballer, you are a pawn in a much bigger game. Once the season starts, you are at the beck and call of the club. That can be difficult.'
At Watford, where Elton John was once chairman and Graham Taylor, the oft caricatured former national coach, now manages, Palmer is discovering life further from the elite. Watford were relegated to the second division last season, as Ipswich had been relegated from the Premier the season before. 'Two relegation seasons in succession', he notes. 'The football is very different at this level, much more hoof and hope. But I've been playing a bit more in defence this season, which I can see becoming a long-term thing.'
And the longer-term? He wants to play 500 games - he's approaching 200 now and may then consider the most tenuous job of all: football manager. 'It's not the most secure profession and it's seven days a week. But I like the idea of building a team. The older I get, the more it appeals. Meanwhile, Palmer's alma mater could do worse than seek advice, and inspiration, from their most intrepid alumnus. When Cambridge meet Oxford at Craven Cottage on 29 March, they'll be looking for their first Varsity victory since 1989 - the year the side included one Steve Palmer.
Reproduced from the Cambridge Alumni Magazine with kind permission of the Editor.