SIR Alex Ferguson relied on it, while Kevin Keegan used it every week.Yes, Jimmy Powells’ garden shed invention has helped superclubs around the world.
     Newcastle fan Jimmy is the football world’s chief supplier of tactics boards – the magnetic model pitches used to brief players and help mastermind crucial games from the dressing room. Jimmy, of Cramlington, Northumberland, first dreamed up the idea to help improve his sons’ soccer skills when they played for Wideopen Juniors. Gateshead FC got wind of the idea, Newcastle United then made a purchase and, before long, even former England manager Sven Goran Erikson was placing orders.      Jimmy has since sold to almost every Premier League club, England, and squads as exotic as the Brazilian youth team.
    The retired accountant makes no more than £20 a week from his sideline, for which he has never been publicly recognised. Jimmy, 62, said:
    “I can never believe this is a multi-million pound industry and here’s little old me beavering away in a garage making about £20 per week. “I had the idea when my sons were playing junior football. I thought if I could put up a board I could actually show them exactly how to play. “Then I looked at the market and was amazed to discover football clubs were still using chalk. I sold one to Gateshead and it just went from there. Now I see interviews on TV with the board in the back room. Football academies use them and everyone from TV programmes, adverts and soccer schools – but no-one knows it’s me who makes them.”
     Grandfather-of-one Jimmy continues to sell his tactics boards, handmade to order from his garden shed. Made from large tin sheets with plastic edges, each board costs around £40 to produce, but the bulk cost of buying the metal meant Jimmy had to fork out for more than 1,000 boards up-front. He said: “I think they will be in the garage long after I’ve passed away to be honest.
     “But I want to keep making them for as long as possible. I think they’re great. “People see them and everyone says the same thing. They love them.”
     When Jimmy isn’t focussing on the boards, his hobbies include teaching the guitar, playing the mandolin and watching his beloved Newcastle United.
But were the Magpies using Jimmy’s magic tactics board during the doomed 2008-9 season that saw them relegated from the Premier League?
     “I wouldn’t want to speculate about that,” he joked. “I don’t want people out there saying it was all my fault.”