A MUCH-loved figure at Southfields is stepping out from behind the half-time hospitality table to walk 40 laps of the pitch to help replace failed floodlights.

At 84, Phil Easley is now a familiar face at half-time at Radstock Town FC after joining the award-winning hospitality team four years ago, alongside his daughter, Ruth Newport.

Now he is trading the serving table for the touchline.

Together with Michael 'Taff' Jenkins, he will walk 40 laps at Southfields, a distance of around eight miles, to raise money for a cause that has become pressing at the Jewson Western League Division One club: the replacement of its floodlights, which have failed.

Phil began supporting the club four years ago, following the death of his wife, whom he had married when he was just 17. Lending a hand with the hospitality gave him a new routine, a new community, and a renewed sense of purpose.

So far, the Radstock Town FC supporter has raised more than £1,318 of his £2,000 target to help the club out.

Radstock Town Football Club was founded in 1895 and believed to be among the oldest clubs in Somerset. Every pound raised will be quite literally be used to turn the lights back; without them the midweek and winter fixtures simply won’t be possible.

A spokesperson said: “It is a neat illustration of what keeps clubs at this level of the game alive.

“The floodlights will be paid for not by a benefactor or a grant windfall, but by an 84-year-old volunteer putting one foot in front of the other, while the community he found late in life digs into its pockets to cheer him on.

“On the evidence of the response so far, Phil will not be walking alone.”

The fundraising page can be found by searching Radstock Town on GoFundMe.