Memories are made of this as Oldham RLFC celebrates in style

It was a day that will always be remembered – a real Family Affair and one that, for me, had its crowning glory when I was leaving Boundary Park and there were a few young boys in red-and-white Oldham tops, playing tig-and-pass with a rugby ball on a bit of grass.

It wasn't the most lauded and applauded moment of the emotional League One title celebration, but it told a wonderful story – a story of how Bill Quinn, Mike Ford and Co have taken on the task of reviving this famous old club's fortunes and have done it with Bill's money, business acumen and fan-friendly approach and Mike's rugby expertise and passionate belief in kids as the future of the town, of the club and, indeed, of the sport we love and treasure.

I write as somebody who has known Mike Ford since he was a boy. I had the pleasure of serving on his testimonial committee – and it was a pleasure – and of reporting on him both as an Oldham player and captain and also as a Great Britain tourist on the other side of the world, not even to mention the years when he was our player-coach and he took us to within one game of Super League all those years ago.

His first pro club was Wigan, but he grew up in Oldham, his boyhood heroes played at 'Sheddings, as a kid he played tig-and-pass on a bit of spare grass in Grasscroft, and once he had decided his future was in rugby league, as opposed to football, he dreamed of the day he would play for Oldham with his beloved family watching in the stands.

He had played, as a talented pup, under rugby-league mad Charlie Saul at Lyndhurst and he played at Wembley for Oldham Boys in the second-row. Andy Barlow, later to become a pro footballer with Athletic, was in the same Oldham Boys rugby team. But that's another story for another day.

This is all about Mike Ford and an era when young Oldham boys were proud to wear Oldham gear, whose heroes played at the ground that was legendary in rugby league, and who would often get out an old slipper or something and use it as a ball to play tig-and pass on a strip of grass near where they lived.

Mike only got to Oldham via Wigan and Leigh, but it's well known, and has been well documented, that Oldham would have been his choice had he got what he wanted.

Since returning to the club after 20 years or so as a coach in Rugby Union, a code in which he coached top clubs and reached international level, now a grandfather and in middle age, Mike has never forgotten his formative years, nor growing up in this area as a talented young sportsman

His burning desire to reconnect the youth of the town with the Oldham club has its origins in his own "local boy" story.

Everything about last Sunday's big day at Boundary Park had the Ford stamp on it – family, kids, fans, Oldham in its widest sense. At the end of the last game of the season he walked across the pitch to the trophy presentation hand in hand with a grandson, Joe's lad. Players with children had the little ones with them and, as you would expect, club captain Jordan Turner, another Oldhamer, received the trophy, took up his rightful position in front of the squad, which looked resplendent in special jerseys for the occasion, and lifted the trophy high in front of a packed and hugely appreciative Joe Royle stand.

What, I wonder, would Jordan's late grandad, have thought of that?

Here was his grandson lifting a trophy on behalf of the home-town club he (grandad) had idolised for most of his life. It was the stuff dreams are made of . . . but then again wasn't Jordan's appointment as captain? Or was it the brainchild of a managing director who, like Turner, was Oldham born and bred?

Up in the Broadway Suite, a young boy called Jenson, from Saddleworth, was called to the front to receive a picture of Mo Agoro, his favourite player.

Back on the pitch, one wondered why the players were turning round. We then saw young boys in the club's Pathway programme, again super smart in replica Oldham kit, lining up for a picture with their heroes. A picture tells a thousand stories.

"Its what we are all about," said Ford. "I could have shed a tear when i saw those boys with their heroes."

He shook hands with each of the boys and told them: "This picture will mean a lot to you one day."

Outside the ground later, more boys flung an oval ball around – a sure sign that the sleeping giant was stirring and that Ford's dream, with its origins in his own background as a boy in Oldham, was rapidly moving towards reality.