Wheeler, 
 
In a minibus packed with Titans, barrelling somewhere north for a GFSN away game, you had the team in stitches, berating one of the straight players for forcing their ‘lifestyle choices’ on the rest of them. I wasn’t on that trip but Beal told me this and it’s tickled me ever since. I can just hear you deliver the tirade with trademark pantomime sass, and the erupted laughter banging around the bus. Humour was in your bones, and it brought joy to everyone within earshot, and a well-timed observation about the size of Andre’s orifice would be just the livener to wake a sleepy team before kick-off. I remember a night in West 5, and I was doing an impression to a few Titans at the bar and I clocked your radiating smile — that you had found it funny was a stamp of approval that I expect you didn’t appreciate was craved. 
 
On the pitch, your long-throw was legendary, your pace hopeless. But it was from the sidelines that you came into your own. Besides being welcoming, warm and delightfully bawdy, you had a sharp mind that gave no quarter to niceties when a dazed team, addled by hangovers, needed a hoof at half-time. To have been a coach at all levels of the club for so long is a feat of forbearance. Whether you were butting heads on the committee or wrangling players, kit and balls on a drizzly, sub-zero Sunday, your commitment was head-scratchingly admirable. Why, on your weekend off, would you commute from Portsmouth to manage a rag-tag of mixed ability Titans in some mud bath in east London? Because you cared. You cared about the club and every one of us who played for you. And it was in you that the club’s founding ethos of inclusivity burned the brightest. You believed that a lack of footballing nous should be no barrier to joining the Titans family. Come one and all, there is a home for you here. 
 
Your death was a coronary to the soul, something that punctures how you see the world — realising that it can be an unforgiving, capricious devil. You had plenty more cheer to give and warmth to share. Your funeral was beautifully pitched, with touching testimonies from your family and friends, and a song list that was as poignant and nostalgic as the 1980s sweets. You maybe a Gosport girl but you had Pompey pumping through your veins, and Fratton Park has lost a devoted son, as has Martha’s (may she rest in peace). 
 
If there is a big gay bar in the sky, you deserve to toast a life well lived with a tequila rose.