Martin Slatter admits there was a tear in his eye during the blessing of a memorial stone dedicated to rugby players in Gloucester who gave their lives fighting in the two world wars.

The stone monument, which was blessed by The Bishop of Tewkesbury, the Rt Revd Robert Springett on Saturday, now stands proudly at the Memorial Ground in Tuffley Avenue, Gloucester, a fitting tribute to all those who gave so much while serving their country in the last century.

“It was a very emotional day,” said Slatter, 70.

“It was emotional for a lot of people but it was an absolutely brilliant day, I’ve been wanting to do something like this for 40 years and now it’s all come to fruition.

“It’s a permanent reminder of all those people who we lost while serving their country.”

Slatter, along with a good number of others, worked tirelessly to make Saturday happen.

He has dedicated so much of his life to rugby in the area and he added: “This is the last thing in place, I’ve achieved everything I wanted.

“I’ll still be involved in rugby, I’ll always be involved in rugby, but I want a bit of breather now.”

That surely won’t last for long too though for a man who sleeps and breathes rugby.

“I’ve been on the North Gloucestershire Combination committee for 48 years and next year will be my 50th on the club committee,” he said with justifiable pride.

That club is Old Centralians, of course, a club he played for for many, many years before eventually retiring in the early noughties.

“I was never going to play for anyone other than Old Centralians,” he continued. “I played for them until I was 55 and I was turning out for the 3rds when time finally caught up with me.”

A hooker, he captained the club in the 70s and has been president of the club for the past 16 years, a position he’d like to continue in for a while longer.

He’s also been chairman of the club as well as a past secretary and president of the North Gloucestershire Combination.

He enjoyed two spells as president, the first in the mid-80s and the second coincided when the Combination was celebrating its centenary in 2012.

Slatter is a hugely respected figure in rugby circles around Gloucester and the fact that so many people turned up at the Memorial Ground on Saturday shows what an important occasion it was not only to him but to so many others.

“The president of the RFU [Chris Kelly] was there, the county president [Keith Gee] was there, former Gloucester players such as John Watkins and Malcolm Preedy, the Royal British Legion, all the local rugby clubs, they were all there, it was a special day,” added Slatter.

Two of those local rugby clubs – Old Cryptians and Widden Old Boys – played in a celebratory game to mark the big day.

The Memorial Ground is home to both clubs and their game followed a showpiece match between a North Gloucestershire Combination Vets XV and The Cherry Pickers.

And as Slatter, who spent five years writing Pride of the West, a 300-page-plus account about the history of the North Gloucestershire Combination, reflects on the day – a day that was made possible all those years ago by the foresight of former Gloucester and England player Arthur Hudson – he admits that now that it is all done and dusted it will leave a bit of a hole in his life.

“It’s all been such a big thing,” he conceded, “maybe I’ll find another project…”