Iain Smith is the man who saved the Cheltenham League.

A bit of an exaggeration? Not when you read what league secretary Ian Hamilton told The Local Answer in February.

“Without a treasurer the league can’t function,” he warned. “We can’t work without someone managing the funding.

“If no one comes forward, the league will have to fold. And yes, I am very worried.”

Hamilton was speaking at a time when the league was looking for someone to take over from Matt Neave, who was standing down as treasurer after nine years due to the pressure of work.

Two weeks later Hamilton contacted The Local Answer with some good news.

“The position in terms of the treasurer is that Iain Smith is going to attend our remaining meetings until the end of the season as an observer/guest,” Hamilton explained.

“The position is then up for election at our AGM in June. All is looking good though with Iain and he appears eminently suitable and keen.”

Hamilton was spot on and Smith is now very much looking forward to his new role and the start of the new football season.

Not that he sees himself as the man who saved the Cheltenham League, a league that has been going since 1900.

“I very much doubt that,” he chuckled.

The 50-year-old, who lives in Brockworth, certainly is eminently qualified for the role of treasurer because by day he is a finance manager for Capita Life and Pensions in Bishop’s Cleeve.

He also has a very decent sporting background, although not so much in football.

“My main sport was cricket,” Smith said. “I was there from the age of 10 until I was 30 and I played in the first team from the age of 16.”

And he was a pretty decent batsman too, helping the club to a couple of Western League title wins under the captaincy of Mike Bailey.

That was in the days when future Zimbabwe Test players Alistair Campbell and Grant Flower were playing for the team so he was keeping pretty good company.

It was always a fair bet that he would play cricket for the club because the family home backed onto the Victoria Ground and his dad, Duncan, who worked for GCHQ, was the bar chairman.

The young Smith also played a bit of rugby and football too. He was a fly-half in rugby, playing in the youth set-up at Cheltenham Saracens before moving to play for Cheltenham Colts and then Cheltenham Under-21s.

A dislocated knee when skiing and subsequent ligament damage caused when playing hockey ended his involvement in contact sport – he’d also been playing football for NatWest in the Cheltenham Sunday League – at the age of 21.

He took up cycling and golf and although he was pretty good at golf he doesn’t play these days.

“I gave up because of mental issues,” he laughed. “I found it too frustrating. I used to play at Cotswold Hills and I played off 11 but I was never consistent. I could go round in four over or 44 over!”

To be fair Smith could turn his hand to most sports. He can ski – he dislocated his shoulder while skiing at the age of 15 – played hockey for Cheltenham, which is when he sustained his bad knee injury, and played water polo at Arle Comprehensive School.

And while clearly he is something of a sporting all-rounder, he admits that he has very little, if any, involvement with football these days.

So what does he think he’ll bring to his new role as treasurer?

“An independent view of things,” he said. “I’ll be looking at things from a non-football perspective.

“I’ve been to the last three or four committee meetings and I helped out at the charities cup finals, they all seem good guys. I’m looking forward to working with them.”

And it’s fair to assume they are all very much looking forward to working with him too.