As a family we are asking anyone who would like to make a donation in memory of Derek to support the work of the Hive Foundation. The Hive Foundation is a charity that supports the many community activities of Barnet football club.

These activities include putting on walking football sessions for people with dementia, providing access to football coaching sessions for underprivileged children and supporting the work of local food banks.

Why we have chosen this charity? Dad was a lifelong supporter of Barnet Football Club. He first attended a game at Underhill in 1953. As a teenager he greatly enjoyed being allowed to travel with friends all over the London area to attend games and he had very fond memories of attending the 1958 Amateur Cup final at Wembley where he was among a crowd of 100,000 that watched Crook Town defeat Barnet 3-2.

His attendance became less frequent as he left Barnet to attend Sheffield University in 1961 and subsequently moved to the south coast to start his professional and family life. For the next two decades his focus was on career, family and cricket, but he continued to follow the club's fortunes from a distance, not the easiest of tasks in the pre internet age.

Things changed again in early 1983 when he took me to Underhill for the first time. I became hooked almost instantly and began nagging him to take me to more games. At first it was just occasional games, but in 1986 Barnet started to develop a very exciting team and Dad and I quickly got to the point where we attended more games than we missed. That period culminated in Barnet winning promotion to the football league for the first time in 1991 at Fisher Athletic. At the final whistle I remember turning to Dad, to ask if it was OK for me to go onto the pitch, only to find that he was already over the fence and well on his way to the centre circle, part of a celebratory pitch invasion. I think that moment sticks with me now, partly because such behaviour was quite out of character for Dad.

The following season we became season ticket holders and we attended most home games together for the next 30 years. Initially, Dad was my taxi to games, then for a number of years we travelled together on public transport, before our roles switched again and I became his taxi to games until his health meant that the journey to Barnet became a little too much in the autumn of 2022.

He continued to watch games streamed over the internet and we attended our final game together when Barnet visited Eastleigh earlier this year.