When I was a youngster many, many years ago, one my favourite parts of the week was when I got the comic called ‘The Wizard.’ There was a particular gentleman in there called Wilson.

What used to happen was that a race would start at an athletics stadium and, after the runners had gone a fair distance out of nowhere would appear this man, not wearing the t-shirt and shorts everyone else had on, but what these days would be called a onesie.

It was black.

The crowd roared.

Where did this man come from?

Who was he?

He chased everyone and went through the crowd of athletes past everyone to win and disappeared out the other end of the stadium.

In between times he would pop up and do good works around the world and disappear again.

I was reminded of this after the excitement and the noise etc died down from our neighbours up the road who have just completed the most incredible climb to the Premier League in the history of the game.

We at Saints have always had a close friendship with Bournemouth.

In my day it was a regular fixture to take our team there to help them out.

I can never remember times being as bad as they were about six or seven years ago.

Listening to an ex-player called Matt Holland on the radio, there was one day when the players could have all walked away from the club, signed for someone else and no-one could have stopped them, but they agreed to a man not to do that and to turn out the next Saturday for the club.

That’s how bad things were.

Now we hear that after being relegated on more than one occasion the club was within minutes of going out of business altogether when a man appeared.

I don’t think he wore a onesie, he was a businessman who had worked hard all of his life to become successful.

He didn’t even come from this area. Originally he was from a town far away called Manchester.

With the club being within minutes of extinction, Jeff Mostyn ignored the calls of his advisors, accountants etc, and produced a cheque for £100,000.

Hallelujah.

This saved the day, enabled the club to carry on, and then another sort of Wilson, in the form of an ex-player who had to pack in through injury, appeared.

His name was Eddie Howe.

He was, at 31, probably the youngest manager in football at the time.

And lo and behold, since then the club has been promoted twice and the culmination was witnessed all around the world when they all but got promoted again with the game televised against Bolton Wanderers.

The scenes afterwards were incredible, with the crowd invading the pitch, the jubilant dressing room, the euphoric supporters in the stands and the other magic man – a gentleman from Russia, Maxim Demin – overcome with emotion, and the Mancunian, Jeff Mostyn, dancing with delight.

The only hope is that the Wilson called Howe is not allowed to carry on and vanish at the other end of the stadium.

Plans to fill in the corners should be done quickly to stop this happening.

Seriously, I think everyone in football will be saying ‘well done.’ It’s a fantastic story with a team assembled of either free transfers, loan deals or very small fees with figures such as a turnover of £5m being mentioned compared to someone like Chelsea whose turnover in the same period was £255m, going up later to £319m.

It puts everything into perspective.

For the fairytale to carry on it will obviously need not just the ground changed, if for nothing else the number of visiting supporters who will be coming on a regular basis.

Also the media side needs to be changed, as they are joining the ranks of the clubs who will be watched on a regular basis in all parts of the world.

Of course the team will need strengthening and reality will already be setting in that the next players to come in will cost a lot more than the wonderful team who are there at present.