Bolton Wanderers club secretary Simon Marland will be stepping down from his role at the end of this season.
The 63-year-old who grew up in Farnworth is a lifelong Wanderers fan and has been at the club full-time since 1993 and been associated with the Whites since the 1980s.
He wrote for the programme and covered the reserve team home and away before joining full-time in 1993 as part of the finance team, later becoming club secretary in 2000.
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He has missed just one Bolton first-team game since 1975 because of a car accident on the way to Watford in 1981, with his first Wanderers match coming in May 1967 with a 5-0 win over Millwall in the old Second Division which he saw with his dad Neville - the first of more than 4,000 fixtures.
Simon has reflected on his time working for the club, particularly the goldern era under Sam Allardyce in the top flight and the world renowned talent that he was able to bring to Wanderers.
And after dark times in recent years with the club dropping down the leagues and avoiding the prospect of extinction, Simon foresees a positive future for Wanderers.
He said: “We got into the Premier League and stayed in the Premier League.
“Then we started bringing in the overseas players and it became a different club – in a positive way.
“We’d done it in the 1990s a little bit, but now we were bringing in superstars everyone had heard of – like Djorkaeff, like Okocha.
“If you had said when I took over as secretary in 2000 that we would be playing in the UEFA Cup against Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid no-one would have believed you.
“I thought our European days were going to be playing in the Anglo Italian Cup, like we did in the 1990s, and Pisa and Ancona were going to be our limit.
“And we were there turning up at the UEFA Cup draw with all the big clubs, who were also there for the Champions League draw, and you’re thinking ‘big time here!’
"Football is like life. You’ll have your good times and bad times.
"And if you get to the end and you’ve had more good times than bad, you’ve not done so bad.
“I’d like to think we’ve had more good times at the club than bad. I’ve been lucky.
“We are in a much better position now than we were even 12 months ago. When you think we were in League Two and you think ‘we’ve got to get out first time’ and we did.
“As long as we keep building now and each season gets slightly better, hopefully in the next five or six years we will end back to where we should be.”
He will step down from his role at the end of the League One season, bringing to a close 22 years in job, which Wanderers will be seeking to fill.
Wanderers chairman Sharon Brittan has paid tribute to Simon's service to the club, which will continue as he will work for Wanderers part-time as a historian.
“Simon has been an outstanding servant of Bolton Wanderers, whose level of commitment and passion for the club he supports must be almost unique in our game," she said.
“His knowledge, expertise and experience have been vital in helping to guide this great club.
“Those qualities – together with his support and dedication – have been invaluable to me and my colleagues since we took over with the aim of bringing back some more of the success he was previously part of with Wanderers.
“I am very thankful to him. He will be missed but, equally, always welcome and I know he will continue to be a valuable part of the Wanderers’ family in a different way in the future.
“On behalf of the Bolton Wanderers family I would like to wish him well in his retirement and I know he will continue to be a familiar and friendly face around the University of Bolton Stadium.”
