WANDERERS will wear black armbands against Gillingham after losing one of their own this week.

It is sometimes hard to appreciate the relationships that are built up inside a football club, which is a quite unique working environment.

We all make great play over the bonds players build with each other, their manager or the coaches, but sometimes overlook the support staff who don’t spend much time in the headlines but do a job which is every bit as vital to the team’s success.

Football clubs can often feel quite transient, staff fortunes tied inextricably to those of the team. Good people come and go, some stick around longer than others, but the club moves on.

In the last few years there haven’t been that many constants at Wanderers during troubled times but head chef Brian Ward was one of them.

I was very sorry to hear he had passed so suddenly this week, and I can honestly say the training ground will be a different place without him.

Our paths have crossed on plenty of occasions since I started covering Wanderers, and I know for a fact he was a regular reader of the Evening News because he would rarely miss a chance to quiz me.

Whenever I’d bump into him on a break at the back of the Euxton kitchens, or as he was tidying away in the cafeteria at Lostock, he was sidle over to ask what was “really happening… and I don’t mean that rubbish you print in the paper.”

I’m quite sure he could have told me a thing or two. You don’t exist for that long in a closed ecosystem like a training ground without learning how to keep a secret.

My last proper conversation with him was not that long ago. We were talking about the changes they had made at Lostock since the summer, and what they would need to do to bring things up to the level he wanted them. Brian clearly took a great deal of professional pride in his work.

And the evidence is there to suggest he did an excellent job.

Brian worked for De Vere Whites for 11-and-a-half years and got involved with the first team in 2005 when he travelled with Sam Allardyce’s squad on their various European escapades and ensured their food was up to scratch.

A few years later he moved to Euxton, where me, and pretty much any member of the North West press pack at the time could vouch for the fact he would cook a mean breakfast. It was so good, in fact, that Jack Dearden often ate three.

That was a fun time to cover the club. Things weren’t always happy on the pitch during Gary Megson’s time at the club but there was an old school way about the way he did things behind the scenes, and letting the press in for breakfast was a perfect example.

I can vaguely remember a running battle between Brian, Meggo and Steve Wigley over the correct viscosity of morning porridge. But I don’t think it stopped the Wanderers coaching staff - or Dearden - eating it.

Through the Owen Coyle and Dougie Freedman era, the staff canteen became a bit of a no-go area for press types like myself. But that didn’t stop Brian sneaking you out the odd cup of soup on a cold day.

For the players and other staff - especially his right-hand-man Chris McCoy - the relationship obviously ran much deeper than those of us who bobbed in a couple of times a week.

Professional athletes are fickle creatures and goodness knows how many diverse needs Brian would have had to cater for down the years.

Think of how many different cultures Wanderers have tapped into over the last decade – and then wonder what they would be happy to eat when they sat down with their team-mates.

But Brian must have done something right because the sheer number of acknowledgements and well-wishes from ex-players far and wide are a reflection of how well he was respected.

Brian will be missed greatly. My sincerest condolences go out to his family, his friends, and the lads and lasses at Wanderers for whom he was counted as both.