FRANK Rothwell is in his element.

There are construction and agricultural vehicles of all different shapes, sizes and capabilities dotted in and around Boundary Park while the club’s brand new £1million pitch is being laid and new car park spaces are being created behind the Rochdale Road End, and it is as if he has been transported back in time; back to a time when he was enticed by tractors and bulldozers and developed a love of learning how they operate.

It is where the journey from the M62 motorway to OL1 all started, providing him with the skills and knowledge and combining that with his own insatiable work ethic to make his millions in business and put him and his family in a position to buy - and save - Oldham Athletic.

It is almost a year since the Rothwells - Frank, his wife Judith, daughter Su and son Luke - completed their takeover and lassoed Latics from the jaws of liquidation and possibly extinction.

He was meant to have been retired. Instead he has, he says, never been busier. But he loves it, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

As we sit in his freshly washed Range Rover he gives precious little thought to the mounds of mud he is caking his pristine wheels in as he drives us over what will be a car park extension come the start of the new season, providing vital income for the club through their links with neighbouring Royal Oldham Hospital.

One minute he is telling me about how he grew his business from a handmade portacabin on his driveway to becoming the leading supplier of site sleepers and portable welfare units with Bunkabin, the next we are watching a tractor unload a pile of rubble that will be used to level out the car park.

He breaks off from the conversation to marvel at the speed it takes a digger driver to change his bucket.

“That used to take me an hour,” he says, “taking out pins and all sorts.

“I worked on the M62 motorway. The big valley at the top is called Windy Hill and I worked up there for about 18 months. I worked on some big diggers up there too.

“I had wanted to be a farmer but unless you come from a farming background or your parents are farmers and they own the farm, or you’re very wealthy and you can just go and buy a farm, it’s very difficult to become a farmer and get in on the act.

“My parents were very much working class. I’m the eldest of five kids and I can remember my mum having three jobs. I know what it’s like to have second hand clothes.

“We never went hungry as such, but when my dad was off work with a back injury we were the first family in school to get free school dinners.”

It was not long before Rothwell was climbing his career ladder.

“I left home at 19 when I got the job on the motorway,” he explained.

“In one week my wage went up from £9 a week as an apprentice tractor mechanic to £35 a week on the bulldozers on the motorway. I earned more than my dad!”

From there, the newly married Rothwell - accompanied by his wife Judith - went out to a construction project in Zambia as a foreman fitter for 18 months, before building his first, life-changing portacabin after returning home.

“I’ve been in business now since 1979 and in that 43 years we’ve had good years and we’ve had extremely bad years,” he said.

“We have a recession at the moment but it’s nothing like the recession in 1992. One of our welders, I started him in 1992 and he was only a young lad, and he was a welder but he would do anything, painting, everything.

“Then what happened all of a sudden we’d no work and I had to lay him off. He’d only worked for us for a couple of months, and he’d got a young family. He had no rights as an employee, he hadn’t worked for us for long enough.

“But luckily he’s one of those blokes who kept phoning me up ‘have you anything yet?’. Eventually we had something for him to do so he came back and he’s been with us ever since.”

He is part of the facelift project at Boundary Park this summer.

With club, stadium and land finally back under single ownership, plans are being made of how best to use the facilities and space at their disposal, with many of them still in the brainstorming phase.

The most pressing matter was the pitch, with an extensive programme to install a new hybrid surface for the start of the new 2023/24 season well under way.

The new pitch will consist of 97 per cent natural grass and three per cent plastic, with the biggest pitch renovation in 25 years at the club made possible thanks to a grant from Oldham Council.

After teaming up with Chappelow Sports Turf, vegetation has been removed from the pitch, with the fibres separated for future use, and a total of eight inches will be removed with new drains, new irrigation system and new sprinkler system installed before new seeds are sown.

Within a month of the grass germinating, the hybrid pitch will then be stitched in.

While Chapel Road and Little Wembley will also undergo renovations, the installation of new dugouts has also started at Boundary Park. And that’s where the welder comes in, and Latics chairman Frank goes back to his roots and acts as foreman.