BOTH Bolton Wanderers and Tranmere Rovers owe a tremendous debt to Warwick Rimmer, who will be honoured in tonight’s friendly at Prenton Park.

While the Birkenhead men profited hugely from the youth system he masterminded for three decades, producing stars such as Jason Koumas, Alan Mahon and Ryan Taylor, Wanderers did so with his work on the pitch.

Only four players represented Bolton more times than Rimmer, whose 528 first-team outings between 1960 and 1975 spanned two great eras for the club.

As a young defender he was spotted playing for England Schoolboys and came into a team as a teenager which contained a raft of international stars. When he departed in his mid-thirties to start a career in coaching at Crewe, he had helped Jimmy Armfield’s side back into the Second Division and paved the way for another memorable spell under Ian Greaves.

Bill Ridding, himself a former Tranmere player, signed Rimmer in 1956 which sparked a lifelong friendship with another new arrival, Freddie Hill.

“I used to meet Freddie in the café near the station with our dads on our way down to Bromwich Street,” he recalled to The Bolton News. “We’d train every day, play snooker every night and go to the pictures because they gave us a free pass.

“In those days you’d get the bus to games. If you weren’t playing very well, that bus up to Burnden Park at 1.30pm was a nightmare. If you played well, someone paid your fare.”

When the Big Freeze wrecked English football in the winter of 1962, Rimmer recalls Ridding taking his team to play a friendly against Manchester United, who had a young Northern Irish whippersnapper doing tricks on the wing.

“My endearing memory was Roy Hartle up against George Best on the left. There was no way we should have played. It was like someone had put a hosepipe on the pitch.

“But because we’d both gone over and stayed in a big posh hotel in Dublin and drove into Cork, we felt we had to play.

“Best comes up to Hartle and they are separated by a massive muddy puddle. He starts doing all the tricks on one side of the puddle and Roy just looks down, sweeps a load of water up from the puddle and left him absolutely drenched. He got the ball as well.”

Rimmer’s rise to the first team coincided with the departure of Nat Lofthouse, Derek Henin and Tommy Banks and the imbalance of the squad coupled with the abolition of the maximum wage took its toll, ending in relegation in 1964.

Nearly a decade later Wanderers fell out of the Second Division but the decision to bring in ex-England international Jimmy Armfield signalled a change of direction. They lifted the title in 1973 with Rimmer as captain.

“When Jimmy came in after relegation he was very fortunate – suddenly there was a crop of very good young players who came through all at once, the likes of Garry Jones, Don McAllister, Alan Waldron, Paul Jones, Sam Allardyce, Mike Walsh and Peter Nicholson,” Rimmer explained. “He still had some experienced players like myself and Charlie Wright, Tony Dunne a bit later on, and of course a great goal-scorer like John Byrom.

“I felt from the first match Jimmy took over that we wouldn’t be in that division long.”

The rise of Allardyce signalled the end for Rimmer, now in his mid-thirties, and he took up a player-coach role at Crewe with Harry Gregg.

After that he spent two years coaching in Sierra Leone, narrowly missing out on World Cup qualification in 1982 to an Algeria side which went on to beat West Germany in Spain.

Rimmer returned to Birkenhead and landed a job back at Burnden Park in the commercial office alongside former team-mate Lofthouse and Alf Davies.

“It was the time the scratch cards were out,” he said. “People went absolutely mad for them. I remember one day we played Newcastle and someone passed a message on that one of the girls was in trouble on the town hall square.

“I got there and a group of the fans was pushing one of the kiosks round, with the woman inside, at about 40 miles an hour. She was screaming. I nearly started a fight.”

Rimmer then began a 30-year association with Tranmere, initially moving into the commercial side before accepting an invitation from former school friend, and club chairman, Peter Johnson to launch an academy.

“I went home thinking ‘I’m not sure about this,” he said. “I knew what football was like, it wasn’t always a steady pay cheque. Of course I agreed and that is what I was doing up to a few years ago.”

It is estimated that the players who moved through the Tranmere youth ranks during Rimmer’s time fetched the club around £14million.

Alan Rodgers, Kenny Irons, Steve Simonsen, Danny Coyne, Joe Murphy, Alan Mahon, Max Power, Tony Thomas and Clint Hill are also among his alumni.

“During the John Aldridge days I used to sit and work out that at least 40 per cent of the team had come through the youth team,” he said.

Both Tranmere, now in the Conference, and Wanderers, who were relegated from the Championship last season, have fallen on harder times of late. But Rimmer is confident there are better days ahead.

“I am an optimist and I’d like to think it will all come back again,” he said. “Fortunately for me that’s the manager’s job now.

“Bolton have a magnificent stadium, which can only help to attract good players, and it’s still mightily impressive when you drive up.

“With a bit of luck and good judgement, it’ll be fine.”

Wanderers face Tranmere tonight at Prenton Park, kick-off 7.45pm, with a legends game from 6.30pm.