As featured in our matchday programme, we speak to former central midfielder Mike Lester.
Following his football career, he turned to coaching and ran his own soccer schools as well as managing non-league teams. His most recent appointment was at Oldham Town, a team in the North-West Counties League before they unfortunately ceased to exist. 
BEST MATE…
It probably comes from when I first started at the club to be honest, but DENNIS LEMAN. I was at Manchester City with Dennis, so we went a long way back. I knew Dennis coming into Scunthorpe and he was already one of my best mates at City. We had a great set of lads in the dressing room though.
BEST TRAINER...Points (NEIL POINTON) by a mile. He couldn’t get enough football and he was a really good lad. I spoke to him not long ago and he’s now at Bolton Wanderers working for their community department.
LEADER…The leader would probably have been, by example, JOHN GREEN. I had a spell as captain of the side, but John signed from Rotherham United and had some injury problems of his own. His attitude and desire to win and do well made him a good leader by example.
MOST SKILFUL…After me? It’s a fact, I would say it was me. That was my game. To be fair, we had a lot of skilful players, so if it wasn’t me, I’d go for Brolls (MIKE BROLLY). He was a good player and he was another lad I’d played with before – for Grimsby Town when we won promotion.
MOST INTELLIGENT…Brolls (MIKE BROLLY) was a teacher, so he was up there but the most intelligent player was ALAN WHITEHEAD – a centre half. He was a bright, astute man. He knew what was what, how to approach things and he might even have gone into teaching as well.
JOKER… Neenan! JOE NEENAN! Crackpot. He was just a generally funny man. He obviously wasn’t all there – he was a goalkeeper after all. I don’t think he ever took anything seriously.
UNSUNG HERO…I would probably say TOMMY GRAHAM. He always at least a 7/10 in every game and was a reliable player. He was my central midfield partner for a while and always did the job. He was really consistent. I played with Tommy at Barnsley as well, so it’d definitely be him. We were different sort of players. I wanted to get on the ball, he worked hard and got forward, but we complemented each other.
QUICKEST…That was probably JULIAN BRODDLE. He’s the only player I can think of.
BEST TEAM…The season we won promotion – for obvious reasons. I enjoyed my time at the club on the whole, we went through a few dodgy spells and I did experience a relegation too. We had a good side the year we won promotion, but just didn’t kick on. We had plenty of goals within us with Cammy (STEVE CAMMACK) in the side. It’s crazy I played the most games in my career at Scunthorpe, but I really enjoyed my time there. I was fortunate to play alongside a lot of good players in my career, in a lot of good sides, and be a part of six promotion winning teams – that Scunthorpe side being one of them.