Evergreen kit man Dave Matthews has been dressing the Albion players for almost half a century.

In his time he has seen 25 managers pass through the doors, thousands of players start and leave and he has travelled the world with his favourite team.

Starting out as a 15-year-old, he went along to The Hawthorns looking for a job because his dad did not want him working in factories.

As a keen gardener he hoped for a job as a groundsman, but the only vacancy going was in the wash room.

He began scrubbing boots and washing muddy T-shirts before working his way up to become kit manager, as he is today.

He joked: “I’m still waiting for the groundsman job. It’s not well paid and it’s not glamorous but I do love it here. I’ve travelled the world with the team I have always supported. There’s a lot of banter and I love being involved.”

Father-of-two Dave, from Hasbury, Halesowen, has accrued so many anecdotes that he is planning to write a book when he reaches his 50th year in 2011.

He believes Baggies legend Jeff Astle was the most gentlemanly player he has worked with and former manager Ron Atkinson became a personal friend.

The 63-year-old said: “Jeff was a just a great man.  We are about the same age and I got to know a lot of the yesteryear players quite well, I think now they are all so young that they think I am a bit old.

“I used to drive Jeff to the dogs before he had his driving licence. He was your normal kind man, who used to play dominoes in the pub.

“Ron Atkinson was a real character as well. I used to mow his lawn at his house in Barnt Green.

“In the end he bought me a sit-on lawnmower so I could get it done quicker. Whenever he went away I used to look after his car as well. I would have his Merc parked on my driveway, which was nice, and I’d drive his wife to Heathrow if she was flying out to meet him.”

One of Dave’s favourite memories is at the 1993 play-off final against Port Vale at Wembley.

He added: “When I got there I said to myself that whether we win or lose I was going out onto the pitch.

“We ended up winning and I ran out at the end of the game.  Someone ended up pulling me into the middle of the pitch and I ended up on the team photo.

“There was another time when we were flying back from a match in East Germany and the military stopped the plane from taking off because they wanted to look through all our luggage.

“I was there on the tarmac surrounded by men with rifles and I had to open up all our kit skips for them to look through. Luckily they didn’t find anything”

In 50 years Dave says he has seen his workload increase many times over. He first started sorting match T-shirts, shorts and socks for the professional players.

Now he manages a team of three – Mo and Lyn in the laundry and faithful assistant ‘Bamber’ is second in command.

Between them they plough through match day kits – six for each player – away kits, training clothes, rain jackets, undergarments and towels for the 30 squad members and around 150 academy players.

Mo Brookes, from West Bromwich, who has 25 years service, can get through five boxes of 9,960kg of washing powder a day in the club laundry, which boasts four industrial sized washing machines and the same again in tumble driers.

Dave added: “They are always going. It’s never ending washing.  It’s a great job though, I can’t complain.”