Ice hockey’s Roman Abramovich? How Telford Tigers found their roar

In the bowels of the rink is a broom cupboard filled with an array of multi-coloured ice hockey sticks, laid out with precision. “This was my home,” says Scholes. “As a 15-year-old this was where I loved being. It was my job to look after the sticks. I would spend hours shaping the curve on them, heating them with a blow torch and then bending them over a chair or with my feet.

“Each player likes his stick a slightly different way and you knew if they had a bad game, there was a good chance you would get the blame for not getting his stick right. I used to carry home 15 sticks on the bus just so I could work on them at home.”

The stick room circa-2014 is a different place, though. Gone are the heavy wooden lumps that would snap regularly. In their place are a myriad of carbon-fibre sticks, each one costing more than £250.

“As an owner, I didn’t want my players coming to me saying ‘we can’t play well because we don’t have the right equipment’. We give the guys the best equipment, the best sticks, so that they can concentrate on producing their best on the ice.”

Scholes left Telford for London as a 16-year-old, soon after seeing the Tigers win their last championship title in 1988. He was a missionary in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, set up TV channels in Africa, went broke and then launched his own business empire while sleeping on a friend’s floor. These days his company turns over some £50m.

Scholes has brought a new professionalism to the Tigers. Players are now given 52-week multi-year contracts where once they were paid from September to April. The team travel in matching suits, ties, and shoes. With Telford, the team is everything.