There aren't many people who have seen the Club's evolution over the past 20 years from the inside, but one man who saw a lot of the development and who played a big role in shaping the rise of Preston North End back into a force to be reckoned with is for the Plymouth edition of The One And Only.
Kelham O'Hanlon was 31-year-old goalkeeper, who had played well over 400 career games and been capped by the Republic of Ireland when John Beck recruited him to his revolution in 1993. Over the next decade - with a two-year hiatus north of the border with Dundee United thrown in - Kel woulddo his bit on the pitch and then become part of one of the most successful and revered management teams that Deepdale has seen, alongside David Moyes.
Looking back on his arrival at the Club, the state of Deepdale and PNE on turning up for the first time, was the antithesis of what he sees now whenever he visits: "It was really the beginning of the complete change of what you can see now," he told the programme, from his home in Lytham. "When I was at the ground recently I was telling someone about the first time I ever arrived at Deepdale to sign, in the old stand, with the worn out plastic pitch. The place was falling down around your ears and to what it has grown into now is quite remarkably.
"Preston had been a fantastically well supported club some 30 years or so before I enjoyed, when they had been successful, but a lot of the new generation of fans had gone away to watch Blackburn, Liverpool, Manchester United or wherever and John [Beck] did he best to try and recapture the young element of fans, by trying to get an atmosphere and an ambience around the place. He got it going with drummers and all the ideas that he had. He tried to get the local community to fall back in love with the club, which I think he succeeded in at that time. We always had a nucleus of the support, but it was probably an older support and he tried to get the younger support on board as well."
Many would see a goalkeeper as having one job to do; keep the ball out… but not Beck: "In the respect of being a goalkeeper in the squad, John was different. He thought of his goalkeeper as his quarterback and that was the way he would describe it to you. He thought everything started from the goalkeeper, so the distribution was paramount. He just took it for granted that you could make saves and whatever, or you wouldn't be in that position, but he wanted someone who had the amazing ability to drop the ball where he wanted it to be dropped, for the reason he wanted it in that particular area.
"He was forward-thinking on things like diets and fitness and all things connected with it; even then when a lot of people weren't worried about that type of thing. He has fitness coaches come in and he was very forward-thinking. He had his way of thinking and no-one would cloud him from that and change his mind, and I salute him for that. He had his principles and that was the way he was going to play.
"What a lot of people don't realise, was that to play the way John wanted us to play was very difficult; even for the standard of players he had, but when it was played and played well, it was very hard to combat and teams just couldn't cope with it, no matter what they tried. It was only towards the end of his tenure that people realised what he was trying to do and they would play a centre back at right back or left back and head the ball away, to stop it going out of play, but that two a couple of season for people to work out.
"I loved playing on the plastic; I am still walking okay now! You were padded up and everything and I never had a problem playing on the plastic. I know the artificial surfaces now are completely different, but you always had a clean ball; if you were training on it, you knew how it bounced and it was an advantage for me as a goalkeeper. I didn't mind it at all, because the pitches then weren't as good as they are now and when we used to go and play away, we used to play on some ploughed fields, but Deepdale was always the same and I really enjoyed the plastic."
As mentioned previously, in 1994 the Saltburn-born custodian headed to Tannadice, but returned in 1996 under Gary Peters' tenure: "When I came back I was getting to the latter stages of my career as such and I got the opportunity to come back as a play coach. I had no hesitation to come back, because I enjoyed my time at Preston from the start and I also knew how the club was progressing. There was only one way the club was going and I wanted to climb on board and taste a bit of it.
"It was a fantastic time. I remember when I came back we were in the bottom half of what now is League One and we had four or five years of real success, winning the championship in that division and then going forward we challenged again in the Championship, culminating in the Play-Off Final.
"There was a natural evolution that the playing style had to change. I think what happened was that clubs had worked out how to play against us and both David and my own philosophy wasn't the same as John's or Gary's. A lot can be said for the ideas of John and Gary and we took a lot of those on and tweaked them a little and obviously the higher up you go, you have to get better players. There is no big secret that the best managers and the best teams have the best players and that was the same with us. We evolved by getting better players in, to do a better job.
"What we had was a fantastic team effort at that stage. We had a group of lads that had come through with us. They had gradually improved and taken on board everything that we were trying to in-still with them and they had grown with the club as well. They knew what it took; they knew what was expected of them; they knew their jobs and we just tweaked it in places.
"The signing of Graham Alexander - probably one of the best signings of any manager at any football club, for what we paid for him - we brought in quality in different areas and it moved things along. It wasn't wholesale changes; we just added one and two along the way. Some came in and didn't cut the mustard and fell by the wayside and others came in and did well. A lot of lads who came through with us, stuck with us for a long time. The likes of Lee Cartwright who you could depend on and were fabulous players for Preston North End.
"A massive thing for us was that we had a spine and a heartbeat that stayed with us. It was a great place to be for that period. It was good that the lads who started off, could see it through. Lads were playing 200, 300 and 400 games for the club in that period, which was fantastic."
The inevitable happened in March 2002 when David Moyes moved on to bigger things with Everton, leaving Kelham the chance to take charge of the Lilywhites, something of which he is immensely proud.
"It was definitely one of the proudest moments of my career. To be able to sit here now and say that for eight games that I was the manager of Preston North End, no-one can ever take that away from me. It was one of the proudest times in my life and I wish it could only have gone on a bit longer. These things happen, but it was fantastic and I enjoyed every moment of it.
"I can still remember Clive Wijnhard and Cressy missing headers at Crystal Palace in the game before the Forest game and we missed out by three points - with a better goal difference - in the end. That was a fantastic time, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I was very proud to be the manager of Preston North End, even just for a short space of time.
"I had a fantastic affinity with the Preston North End fans and I hope that will last for the rest of my life. I had wonderful times there from the bottom of League One to 90 minutes from the Premier League in a short space of time with a group of players who wanted to do it for Preston.
"In those days the money wasn't such an issue, they played because they loved it - yes, they happened to be good at it - but they loved coming into work every day and I loved going into work every day. It really was a special time to be involved at Preston."
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