Cheltenham North means an awful lot to Mike Scourfield.

He’s been a big part of the rugby club since the age of 15 and now, 31 years on, he has taken on the role of interim chairman.

The one-time second row, who has been the club’s commercial manager for the past three years, stepped up just before the end of last year when Paul Carter stood down and it’s a job he’ll do for as long as is necessary.

He’ll take it on full-time if required but if someone else does come forward they will certainly be able to count on Scourfield’s full support.

For many years the North have been a second home for Scourfield, who is known to everyone at the club as Garfy.

“It was when I first joined the North that I met my lifelong friend Paul Balmer,” said Scourfield. “He was like a second father to me.

“He was a stalwart of the club and I am privileged to have known him up to his passing a year ago when he was our active president.

“It’s really due to Paul and his passion and love for Cheltenham North that I’m so involved with the club and it has become embedded into me.

“His passing was a great loss to me and I count it as a blessing that I was by his side as he passed.”

Scourfield, a one-time Cleeve School pupil, can remember when he first joined the club.

“I started at the club when I was in my teens, a group of us from the school went down,” he said.

“We were part of the first Colts team that they’d had at the club since the days of John Wood and Adge Wakefield.”

And it wasn’t just the junior teams that Scourfield played for in those early days.

“I started in the 4ths when I was 15,” he recalled. “I was just about old enough to play adult rugby. Froggy Jones and Malcolm Kedward asked me to play.

“I played with the likes of Nick Ackerman, Doug Aldridge and Jim Hutton.”

And he was soon making an impression because he worked his way up through the  teams to make his debut for the flagship team while still in his teens.

These days the North play in Counties 2 Gloucestershire, which is a good level, but back then the North were very strong.

“The highest we got to was South West 1, that was in the late-90s,” said Scourfield. “That involved a lot of trips to Cornwall to places like Camborne. We went from playing local rugby to being on a bus for three-and-a-half or four hours.”

Scourfield was playing blindside flanker at this stage and he continued: “I was playing with John Wood, Adge, Rich Prewer, John Poulton, Nige Smith.

“Stuart Gourlay at his peak was before my time but I did play with him in some of the other teams.”

Scourfield was a regular first-teamer for about three years.

“I played quite a lot for the 2nds and in the early 2000s I captained the 3rds,” he said. “I kept a lot of the older players playing and we got quite a few youngsters involved too.”

His rugby career pretty much came to an end 14 years ago when he had a back operation, but he still plays the odd game today.

“That was when my main rugby stopped but I’m still known to put on my boots,” he said.

“I played for the Vets at Bredon Vets for Keith Cristian’s retirement game just before Christmas. That was a good old-fashioned Vets’ game. The teams drank six bottles of port on the pitch during the game!”

It was a game the North won and that made it all the sweeter for Scourfield, a social housing consultant, who wants to build a bright future for the club on and off the pitch.

“I offered to take on the role of interim chairman to stabilise the club,” he said. “I wanted to re-stabilise the committee. I want to involve more volunteers, at the moment we are relying on too few.

“Running a club successfully is like running a business, but you need to have time.

“It’s not like the old days when you just had four senior men’s teams. These days it’s incredibly diverse, which is great, but we’re now running 15 teams.”

The club runs two men’s teams, a vets’ team, a women’s team and various age group teams for boys and girls.

Scourfield, a former captain of the Colts, has played his part in bringing through some of those youngsters. He coached a boys’ side, for whom his youngest son Rory played, from under-6 through to Colts, while his oldest son Bernie, who can play in the back row or in the backs, has played for both the 1sts and 2nds this season, having worked his way up through the junior section over the last 10 years.

Scourfield enjoys watching them play, of course, but there again, as a true one-club man he enjoys watching everyone play for the North.