Bishop’s Cleeve’s David Walker describes himself as a “hands-on chairman” and it’s unlikely that too many will disagree with that assertion.

When The Local Answer called mid-morning on the last Monday in September, the 71-year-old was hard at work on the first-team pitch at Kayte Lane, the place that has been the club’s home since the turn of the century.

The club have also been a second home for a huge part of Walker’s life even though he has never actually lived in the village.

Born in Oxenton, just down the road from Cleeve, these days he lives in Bredon, which is just a little further away.

But Cleeve, and the football club in particular, made an early impression on the young Walker. He was educated at Bishop’s Cleeve School and remembers watching the village football team play on Saturday afternoons.

And he would eventually play and manage the team he watched all those years ago, enjoying significant success at a club whose flagship side currently play in the Premier Division of the Hellenic League.

But that is just a tiny part of what is surely one of the great sporting success stories in Gloucestershire – a true community club that boasts 36 affiliated teams across all age groups, including five at senior level.

Walker’s part in the club’s success has been important, of course, and while there are obviously very many volunteers who have done so much for the club over the years, it’s probably fair to say that not too many have done more than Walker.

“Yes, I would say I’m a hands-on chairman,” said Walker, who these days is retired. “I do the ground maintenance, the bar, look after the clubhouse, the fundraising. There isn’t a job at the club I haven’t done. You can’t ask people to do jobs if you haven’t done them yourself. You could say I have an affinity with Bishop’s Cleeve.”

And the work at the club is ongoing.

“We’re constantly trying to improve the facilities,” said Walker. “We’re looking at installing a 3G as our main pitch at Kayte Lane. We’re talking to the Football Foundation and the Gloucestershire FA.”

Should that dream become a reality – and there’s every reason to think it will – it will only enhance the already impressive facilities at Kayte Lane, facilities that can be used by the club’s 31 junior teams, their youth team, their three men’s teams and their women’s team.

It’s all a far cry from when the club first started playing there at the start of the 2000/01 season and that’s a period that Walker remembers well.

“We got a lease from a private landlord, David Taylor, who now lives in France,” recalls Walker. “That was in 1998 and it was just a field with sheep in.

“We gradually built it up from there. Smiths Industries donated a couple of wooden buildings and we built ourselves a clubhouse and changing rooms and we got ourselves up and running.”

They certainly did and things were looking good on the field as well because the club were soon winning promotion from Division One to the top flight of the Hellenic League.

That was all the more impressive because prior to their switch to Kayte Lane, Cleeve had become something of a nomadic club after leaving their previous home at Stoke Road some years earlier.

“We’d been playing at Moreton-in-Marsh, Forest Green and all sorts of places,” said Walker. “Dave Lewis, who was a committee member, did a grand job during this period.”

Their current clubhouse was built in 2004 and is used Monday to Friday by a children’s nursery, as well as a meeting place for the WI and a slimming club.

Anyone who has been to the club can’t fail to be impressed by the facilities even though Walker says that if they had the space they’d have even more than the 36 teams they currently run.

The junior teams are known as Bishop’s Cleeve Colts, of course, and it’s a set-up that has certainly made its mark on football in Gloucestershire over the past 40-plus years.

“The junior section is really well run,” said Walker. “They were set up in 1974 and these days the chairman is Jon Symons. We’ve had quite a steady flow of players come through to the senior team over the years.

“Some also go off to Cheltenham Town Academy and then come back to the club.”

Walker took a similar route himself back in the day, playing for Cheltenham’s reserves when he was younger.

“I started off as a left-winger, then moved to inside-left and ended up at left-back; they tried to get me back down the field out of the way,” he laughed.

Walker was a pretty decent player, going on to play for Gloucester City and then Forest Green, where he spent 11 years, before becoming player/manager of Bishop’s Cleeve in his mid-30s.

And while any success that he enjoyed on the football field along the way was obviously down to him, some of the success can also be attributed to a certain Peter Goring, a man who Walker describes as “my mentor”.

And as footballing mentors go, they don’t come much better than the Bishop’s Cleeve-born Goring who started with Cheltenham Town before moving to Arsenal in the late 1940s.

He was to spend 11 seasons at the North London club, scoring more than 50 goals in close on 250 appearances and winning both the Division One title and the FA Cup.

“We first met up at Cheltenham Town when he was running the reserves,” said Walker. “We got on and from the age of 18 to 34 I just followed him around and it was him who fixed me up as player/manager of Bishop’s Cleeve.”

Walker has fond memories of his playing career and a couple of games stick out in particular – both FA Cup ties, one for Gloucester City and the other for Forest Green.

“I remember losing 1-0 to Cheltenham Town at Horton Road when I was at Gloucester,” said Walker. “It must have been 50 years ago now but there was a crowd of more than 5,000 there.

“It was in the days when there were no barriers, there was just a rope around the pitch and I remember the baying crowd being right on the touchline.”

The other cup-tie was a replay for Forest Green against Blyth Spartans at The Lawn and Walker remembers: “It finished 5-5 after extra-time. There was a crowd of more than 1,000, it was a great atmosphere.”

Forest Green lost on penalties but it wasn’t Walker who missed from the spot.

“I had cramp, thank goodness, so couldn’t take one,” he laughed.

While that night was obviously a career highlight – Blyth were one of the strongest non-League clubs around in those days – Walker certainly also enjoyed his time as player/boss at Cleeve in the days when they played their home games at Stoke Road.

“We had an old hut with showers,” he said, “and had to clear the geese and chickens off the pitch before we could play.

“I enjoyed being a manager. It was different in those days, there was no financial side of things. The team was made up of family, friends and mates and we went up to Division One West.”

That was in the mid-1980s and the club went on to enjoy even greater success in more recent times.

They won promotion to the Premier Division of the Hellenic League under manager Paul Collicutt before he guided them into the Southern League, a level where they were to spend years before being relegated at the end of last season.

Current boss Steve Cleal is now trying to mastermind a speedy return to that level and Walker said: “The aim is to bounce back if we can. You’ve got to have something to strive for, not only for the club’s members who are all volunteers, but also for the youngsters coming through into the senior team.

“We’ve got quite a young side and they are finding their feet as they move into adult football but we’ve got quite a lot of quality.”

And what about Walker, how long does he plan to carry on his love affair with the club?

“I want to keep going as long as I can while I’m enjoying it,” he said. “The big thing is to get the 3G. That would secure sporting facilities for the community in Bishop’s Cleeve.”

You get the impression that David Walker’s work is not finished yet. He looks certain to be at Bishop’s Cleeve for a good while to come which surely is very good news for everyone connected with the club.