Wayne Bown has been involved with Randwick Football Club on and off for 30 years.

The current boss of their flagship team, who play in Division One of the Stroud League, has had a number of breaks from the club over that period but his love for all things Randwick FC has always burned brightly.

In fact he credits the club for playing a big part in developing him as an individual – a journey that has seen him graduate from Warwick University, become a family man and enjoy a high profile role at Callowell Primary School in Stroud where he is deputy head.

“I first started playing for Randwick’s under-10s in 1989,” recalled Bown, who grew up in nearby Ebley. “Then I went to Marling School which was rugby and cricket dominated and I stopped playing football until I was 16.”

So what got him back into football?

“I read an article that said Randwick Football Club were about to fold,” said Bown. “I definitely didn’t want that to happen so I went back up there with a group of friends from school.”

That was a successful period for Randwick and Bown, who was a decent footballer, but he took another break from the club when he went off to university.

“I always kept in touch with the club,” said Bown. “I kept in touch with people like Staffy [Phil Stafford] and in 2006 I returned to the club to set up Randwick Hornets Under-10s.”

Phil Stafford, the club’s secretary, is one of several long-serving club members who have done so much good for the club over the years.

Most of Bown’s original under-10 players came from Callowell Primary School and it laid the basis for what was to come because these days the club boast a thriving youth section as well as a very successful senior set-up.

After a year Bown handed over his over-10s team to Will Steward, another person who has done so much for Randwick and who Bown played alongside in the club’s under-11s many years ago.

Bown, meanwhile, was making a bit of a name for himself as a footballer in his own right and was good enough to earn a trial at Forest Green Rovers.

“It was when Colin Addison was in charge,” recalled Bown. “Tim Harris was also there and I played at centre-forward. I didn’t quite cut it there, I wasn’t quite good enough.”

But while that may have been true, he was certainly good enough to play at a slightly lower level and he carved out a successful career as a central midfielder at Shortwood United.

Throughout this period in his life he kept a close eye on Randwick’s results and he said: “I always knew that I’d go back at some stage.”

That wasn’t until the start of the 2011/12 season, however, after spells at Brimscombe and Ebley.

“I’d had some bad knee injuries and I went back to help do some coaching,” he said.

So how did he find the club?

“It was like I hadn’t been away,” he said. “All the same people were still there – Steve Mandeville, Phil Stafford, Paul Mason, Stuart Harris, Matt Dickerson, who was part of the ‘98 team.

“I went back to help Gary Smith, it was great.”

And Randwick, who were winning titles in the Stroud League as long ago as the late 1920s, including the Division One title, have certainly enjoyed great success over the years.

Not that winning is the be-all and end-all for Bown even though the club’s flagship team are currently flying high in the top flight of the Stroud League.

“It’s all about standards,” he said. “It’s about behaviour and conduct on and off the pitch, doing things the right way. It’s about having a good youth set-up and having sustainability, it’s long-term thinking rather than short-term.”

And what makes those goals easier to achieve is the fact that it’s the same people, by and large, who have been driving the club forward for so many years.

“That’s what I’m most proud of,” said Bown, whose son Darren is a goalkeeper for the under-10s, “we’re like a family.”

And Bown is one of the heads of that ‘family’ although he says he never had any plans to take over as manager of the first team.

“I’d agreed to run the reserves,” he said. “I’d managed at Leonard Stanley and I thought I’d give it a whirl. I wanted to give something back, the club had given me a lot over the years.”

So how did it go?

“We missed out on promotion to Division Four on goal difference, by one goal,” he said, “it was heartbreaking. I wanted to carry on, the plan was to do three years and get promotion but then Gary Smith stepped down as first-team manager.”

Bown is a big fan of Smith – “He’s one of those who has done more than a decade for the club, he’ll be back,” said Bown – and he agreed to take on the top job.

“No-one else wanted to do it,” he laughed.

And in those early days it was certainly tough going.

“A lot of the players left after Gary left,” said Bown, “it was the end of an era. I took a lot of the reserves up to the first-team and that was a big jump.

“It was a hell of a year but we managed to stay up. We trained twice a week and I think that made all the difference.”

Bown is now in his fourth season as manager and the team have improved to such an extent that they are now serious contenders for the Stroud League Division One title and with it promotion to the Northern Senior League.

“That’s something we definitely want, that would be the cherry on the icing of the cake,” said Bown. “If we did go up I could pass it on to someone else and go back to the youth set-up.”

It’s debatable whether the club would want that to happen, of course, in the event of the club winning the Division One title but if he did go back to helping out the youngsters there would certainly be plenty of teams to choose from.

That’s because in addition to running four senior sides – they also have teams competing in divisions five and seven of the Stroud League as well as a Sunday side – they also run teams for under-16s, under-14s, under-12s, under-11s, under-10s, under-9s, two at under-8s and a team for 5-7 year olds.

That’s an awful lot of players turning up to Randwick playing fields and Bown added: “It’s really flourishing and it brings the village to life.

“We’re very lucky because the villagers really support the club. We’re very appreciative, they deserve a medal for their understanding because we’ve got all the kids playing at the playing fields on a Saturday morning and then it’s the seniors in the afternoon.”