My colleague and friend Roger Phillips, who has died aged 73 of heart disease, was a stalwart of the amateur football club Corinthian-Casuals for 30 years. Roger embodied the spirit of the club. Entirely unpaid, he and his twin brother, Brian, played a major part behind the scenes in transforming Corinthian-Casuals from a side with no ground, struggling in the lower levels of amateur football, to a club playing in the top division of the semi-professional Ryman League with a pitch and stadium to be proud of.
The romance began when Corinthian-Casuals, previously with no home, took over the lease of Tolworth FC just outside Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, in 1988. “It was Casuals’ strict amateur status that appealed to us,” said Brian, “and we knew all about their name.”
Tolworth was primarily a running track with a pitch in the middle and railings round the outside. The Phillips brothers helped reshape it. They did everything from laying down terracing to helping put up the stands and working with others to improve the pitch. Today the main stand has seating for 250 and there are covered standing areas behind each goal.
The brothers took on every possible task on match days, arriving as early as 8am to put up goal nets, mark the pitch, man the turnstiles, sell programmes, coordinate the gate money, pay match officials, and then clean the dressing rooms when everyone else had gone home.
On Sunday mornings they would be back at Tolworth, helping to mark out pitches on the outside area of King George’s Field as the club developed its youth teams; then in the clubhouse kitchen preparing and serving food for parents and players. On Wednesdays they opened up for the club’s academy team. Over the years they also ran the club shop.
To achieve all this Roger and Brian cycled from their home in Sunbury-on-Thames, a 15-mile round trip, sometimes up to five times in a week. It was Roger’s proud boast that they had never once taken public transport to the ground.
Roger and Brian were born in the town of Tregaron, in Cardiganshire, Wales; the family moved to Sunbury in Middlesex when the twins were three. They lived with their parents, William, a company director, and May (nee Curtis), until they bought the house next door in 1975. They did O- and A-levels at Sunbury grammar school, then Roger went to Kingston University to study economics and Brian to Imperial College London to do maths.
On graduating both joined the Inland Revenue and rose to the level of inspector. At the age of 36, Brian retired, and Roger four years later, “because we’d had enough”. The twins lived together at home until Roger’s death. Neither of them married.
Reading was one of their main interests; in later years they had no television. Brian said: “You won’t find anyone who’s read as much as Roger.” Roger was also a Mozart fan and made regular visits to the opera at Covent Garden.
Roger and Brian were longtime members of the Corinthian-Casuals’ committee and also vice-presidents. Their experience and wise counsel, and sense of humour, were a feature of the club’s committee meetings. In March 2018 the brothers were presented with an award by the Non-League Paper at a special evening at Chelsea FC. The nomination from Corinthian-Casuals praised them as “unsung heroes … the absolute lifeblood of our great and historic club”.
Roger is survived by Brian and by three cousins.
