Pete Turnbull has a turn of phrase as neat as the turn of feet he had on football pitches all over Cheltenham and beyond back in the day.

The articulate 52-year-old was a prolific goalscorer in years gone by and was good enough to make a handful of appearances for Cheltenham Town at the start of the 1990s, when the club were playing one level below the Football League.

Born in Hackney, he moved to Cheltenham with his family at the age of two or three so “didn’t pick up much of an accent”.

He admits he was “football mad” as a child and can remember supporting Manchester United from an early age. And before anyone accuses him of being one of those ‘glory boy supporters’, Turnbull was regular at Old Trafford for many seasons in his adult life, and travelled all over Europe watching the Class of 92 and their mates win match after match against many of the biggest clubs in the world.

But while the likes of Beckham, Scholes and Giggs were playing football almost as soon as they could walk, Turnbull was a late starter in the beautiful game.

“I went to school at Gloucester Road Primary and there wasn’t a great deal of sport there,” Turnbull recalled.

So what did he do?

“We’d play our own games in the playground,” he chuckled. “We’d get a stocking and stuff it full of socks to make a sock ball and kicked that about.

“The trouble was that the sock ball would regularly go over the fence into the River Chelt, it was disastrous when that happened. My mum was forever running out of stockings!”

Things didn’t get much better for the wannabe young footballer when he graduated to Pate’s Grammar School. “At that time there wasn’t much football there either,” he said.

Outside school Turnbull would kick a ball in the park as often as he could –

“I went through shoes and trousers all the time,” he chuckled – but it wasn’t until he was 13 or 14 that he started playing for a proper team.

“I think it was Charlton Rovers,” he said.

While Turnbull was unsure of the club, he can remember what position he played from day one.

“I was always a striker,” he said. “I was quick and always had an eye for goal.”

It was the start of a journey that would see him score more than 1,000 goals in senior Saturday and Sunday football, which is more than that great Brazilian, Pele, scored in his career in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Swap the ‘t’ in Pete for an ‘l’ and you get Pele, of course, and come to think of it, ‘Pele Turnbull’ has quite a nice ring to it!

Turnbull’s adult football career began at the age of 16 almost as soon as he had left school.

“I played for Cheltenham Rovers who I think were in Division Three of the Cheltenham League at the time,” he said. ”I was working at an engineering company called Delapena which was situated off Tewkesbury Road.

“It was my first real job and Ron Stevens, who worked there, also ran Cheltenham Rovers.”

Turnbull’s late dad Danny also worked there, but although he’d see his son all week he never once went out and watched him play football at the weekend.

That was in complete contrast to Turnbull’s mum, Yvonne Hawkins, who these days lives in Lynworth and “never missed a game for 20 years”.

“She was very popular and well known on the playing fields around Cheltenham,” laughed Turnbull. “She was quite vociferous and took a referee’s course so she could understand the game better.

“She was very good with the offside law which I fell foul of many times!”

So did mum pass on any of her football knowledge to her boy?

“She was a big critic of mine,” he remembers. “She used to criticise my aerial ability which I thought was one of the stronger areas of my game!

“She was big into the social scene and the lads who I played with were always fully supportive of her.”

Turnbull’s early days in adult football did not produce the shoals of goals that were to follow later.

“I scored a few at Cheltenham Rovers,” he recalled, “but not masses because they played me on the wing quite a lot. In those days I was 7 or 8 stone wet through.”

At not far short of 6ft, he may have looked a bit on the weak side but his career was soon going from strength to strength.

He linked up with Cheltenham Saracens where his stepfather Chris Hawkins was heavily involved – he’s still a fixture at the club today – and from the age of 18 started playing in his favourite position down the middle.

And it wasn’t just on a Saturday that he was bringing home his muddy kit for his mum to wash, because he also signed up for Cheltenham Sunday League team The Whitesmiths, which was the name of the Gloucester Road pub two doors down from where the young Turnbull was living.

And as you’d expect with a pub team there were plenty of beers and cheers along the way.

“When we joined the league we took some pastings,” said Turnbull, “but we had some successful seasons as well. We won a couple of divisions and we also reached a County Cup final.

“I remember one season I scored 57 goals in just 16 league games, it was ridiculous really.”

These days the Cheltenham Sunday League is no more and Turnbull added: “It saddens me deeply. We had a premier league and seven other divisions when I started playing. I think the players must take a lot of responsibility because of the way they abused referees and their opponents.”

Turnbull, a managing director for a company which works in the swimming pool industry, was never one to shy away from responsibility, and he was soon stepping up from the Cheltenham League into the Northern Senior League when Cheltenham Town legend Roger Thorndale came knocking on his door and invited him to play for Smiths.

“I had a long association with Smiths,” said Turnbull. “I played a lot for them and Saracens. I remember going back to Smiths when Jimmy Edwards was manager. He was player/manager at Cheltenham Rovers when I started for them.

“He was a centre-forward as well and I learned a lot from him. It wasn’t just him, I was very lucky because Roger Thorndale was also a fount of football knowledge.”

And while Smiths and Saracens were a big part of Turnbull’s footballing education, ask him which club he considers to be ‘his’ club and he’ll answer “Endsleigh”.

By the late 80s Endsleigh were the new kids on the footballing block, driven as they were by the insurance company’s founder Mike Naylor.

“At the time I was working in the sports facility at the College of St Paul and St Mary,” recalled Turnbull. “I’d see all these young lads training to to be PE teachers and I thought they were all living the dream.

“They were all playing for Endsleigh who were enjoying great success in the Cheltenham League. They soon had four teams and they were all going through the divisions.

“They epitomised the Corinthian Spirit and I wanted to be part of that.”

He didn’t have long to wait.

“When they got promoted to the Northern Senior League I said, ‘I want to play for you’,” Turnbull remembers. “At that time it was a big step away from the usual remit because the team were made up of either college lads or staff who worked at Endsleigh.”

Fortunately, Turnbull has the kind of personality that allows him to fit in pretty much wherever he goes. It always helps if you can deliver on the pitch as well of course and Turnbull certainly did that by the bucketload during his time at the club.

“We won both divisions of the Northern Senior League and then won the County League in successive seasons,” he said, “and I was the league’s top scorer in all three seasons.

“We then won the Hellenic League Division One title and were a top four side in the Premier Division for several seasons.

“It was a pivotal time because Cheltenham Town were in decline at the time and on the verge of dropping into the Southern League, while Endsleigh could have gone into the Southern League.

“We were already groundsharing with Cheltenham.”

Sadly, the death of Mike Naylor, killed in a car crash in southern France in July 1995, was the start of the decline of Endsleigh with Turnbull admitting “it was never the same after that”.

The good memories far outweigh the bad for Turnbull, however, and during his time at Endsleigh his goalscoring exploits had come to the attention of some pretty decent names in the world of football.

“Cheltenham Town were going through managers almost every week,” recalls Turnbull. “It was about the time of Ally Robertson, Jim Barron and Lindsay Parsons.

“I knew Lindsay because he used to take training with the young lads at the college, and at the time I was quite a big noise in local football because of all the goals I was scoring.

“He asked me if I fancied a runout for the club’s reserves and I played about half-a-dozen games for them.”

So how did he get on?

“We played Torquay, Plymouth, Yeovil, Bristol Rovers, Bristol City and I scored in pretty much every game,” he said. “It was a big step up but the last touch was no different!

“It was the speed of the game, the tackling and the general chat on the pitch that was the most different.

“I was 26 or 27 so it was a late opportunity. We had young lads in the team trying to make their way in the game, loanees, players looking for contracts, but for me it was just great to be playing at places like Torquay – Torquay was like Wembley to me!”

That enthusiasm impressed the then manager Robertson, who was also impressed by Turnbull’s natural instinct in front of goal.

“He was in the stand for a home game against Bristol Rovers reserves,” recalls Turnbull. “I scored two goals and I think I had another two disallowed.”

It was the type of form that earned him a call-up to the first-team squad and a place on the bench for the trip to Colchester United, the team who were on the way back to the Football League after just one season away following their relegation from the old Division Four in 1990/91.

“Mark Buckland and Kevin Willets were in the Cheltenham squad at the time and they were real good lads,” said Turnbull, “they really looked after me.

“It was also around the time that the club signed Jimmy Smith, who these days lives just a couple of doors away from me in Prestbury.”

While Smith was to go on to become the second highest goalscorer in Cheltenham’s history with more than 120 to his name, Turnbull managed just one during his half-a-dozen cameo appearances in the first team for the club but in many ways that made it all the more special.

“I never started a game for Cheltenham but I did get that goal,” he said. “It was against Gateshead at Whaddon Road and was played on a quagmire of a pitch. It was an absolute swamp and the game wouldn’t have been played today.

“There was surface water everywhere and I got sent on by Lindsay Parsons, who had taken over as manager, when we were 2-1 down.”

And it was typical Roy of the Rovers stuff as Turnbull grabbed an equaliser before setting up a late winner for Jon Purdie. And of course he can remember the game like it was yesterday.

“Jon Purdie did some magic down the left and when the cross came over I tried to control the ball,” he said, “but I ended up back heeling it into the corner of the net. I didn’t tell anyone I’d meant to control it!”

And Turnbull was not finished yet.

“We were defending a corner and the ball got smashed clear,” he said. “I was in a foot race with, I want to say, Kenny Wharton, the old Newcastle player. He was treading water and I did him for pace, squared the ball on the edge of the box for Jon Purdie to score. Happy days!”

That game was the obvious highlight of Turnbull’s shortlived Cheltenham career but he has absolutely no regrets.

“I was a non-contract player and I think I got £60 a game,” he said. “I was a bit-part player but I remember getting £120 one week after we got a result at Wycombe.

“I also got paid to play for Endsleigh and to get paid for doing something you loved was incredible. I’d have paid them just to play!

“I was living the dream at Cheltenham. It was a huge honour to wear the shirt and get on the pitch.

“I scored a goal and my family were all there, it was fantastic.”

And how did he celebrate that game against Gateshead?

“I went straight down to the Endsleigh Bar to find out how they’d got on,” he said. ”They were good to me.”

Towards the end of the 1991/92 season Turnbull was selected to travel to Cheltenham’s game at Barrow but had to decline because he was unable to get enough time off work!

That pretty much brought the curtain down on his Cheltenham Town adventure but the goals continued to flow from the Turnbull boots, particularly in the Cheltenham Sunday League where he was part of the Prince of Wales team that reigned supreme for a number of years.

And if there weren’t already enough cups and medals on the Turnbull shelf he also had a spell in the veterans’ league playing for Shurdington Rovers.

“There were some good players in our team,” he said. ”Tommy Callinan, Paul Bloomfield, Keith Knight, Jon Skeen, Sean Whelan, Dean and Dylan Blenkinsopp – it was a who’s who of Cheltenham football.”

Turnbull enjoyed the experience but work and family commitments – he has four daughters and three granddaughters – cut short his time there although he also admitted he didn’t take to vets’ football like some of the others.

“I was like a giraffe on ice,” he laughed.

These days he has little or no involvement in sport.

“I’m a member of a gym in Newbury which is where I work,” he said. “I try to get to the gym before I start work. I leave home at 5.30am and I’m at my desk by 8am. I get home at 7pm, eat my tea and go to bed!”

That’s full-on of course but he clearly enjoys the job... and he certainly knows what the end goal is!