If Roger Feltham has a natural habitat, it’s the pitch at The Dripping Pan. Although he’s now taking a well-earned rest, Roger looked after the pitch for the best part of 40 years, thundering across the turf on his mower, cutting ever-elaborate patterns into the surface.

Roger guarded that pitch like a malnourished Rottweiler. Heaven help an opposition substitute that decided to warm-up in the goalmouth at half-time. They were soon moved on with a few sharp words ringing in their ears. And if they were stupid enough to refuse, Roger would dismantle the nets, accompanied by a loud cheer from the Philcox.

Generations of club secretaries would be used to the early-morning match day calls from Roger, who would be at the ground at first light, checking to see if the pitch was waterlogged or frozen. If too much wet stuff was a problem, Roger would drag out the “big sponges” to soak up the worst of it, determined not to let a pitch inspection spoil everyone’s afternoon. Dragging those rain-sodden sponges off the pitch should have been an event on World’s Strongest Man — they were heavier than a comatose elephant.

There was no rest for Roger in the summer, either. Before work he’d be down at the Pan, setting up a misbehaving sprinkler to run the length of the pitch to stop the new shoots drying out; he’d be back after work to switch it all off. And fix yet another leak in the hose.

Roger’s efforts didn’t stop at the pitch. He was often the nominated minibus driver for away trips, which included some particularly long schleps in the season when the Rooks reached the National League (then the Conference). That was a bloody long drive to get hammered 5-0 at Gateshead…

Then, of course, there’s the pyrotechnics. If the final whistle is met with a clattering fireworks display that’s setting off car alarms in Calais, it’s almost certainly Roger lighting the fuses. He almost managed to kill the entire promotion-winning squad of 2019 with a roll-out firecracker outside The Landsdown. As manager Darren Freeman remarked at the time, it was the fastest some of them had run all season…