JT was one of the most popular players at Deepdale in the 1980s and the matchday programme caught up with him.

Writing a piece about your first football hero is no easy task, but it makes it easy to wax lyrical when he speaks so highly of his career at Deepdale. John Thomas arrived at Deepdale in 1985 for the first of two spells that really saw the lows and highs of the Lilywhites.

There are players of different eras who supporters of football clubs salivate about when they come up in conversation, such as Shearer for Blackburn fans in the 1990s, Ken Wagstaff at Hull City in the 1960s or Tommy Wright at Leicester City in the 1980s. For PNE fans in their mid 30s John 'JT' Thomas falls into that category.

The Wednesbury-born frontman, who left a career in carpentry to join Everton in 1977, had already had six clubs by the time Tommy Booth brought him to Deepdale from Lincoln City in 1985. He arrived at a Club with ambitions of promotion from the old fourth division, but his first year proved to be an 'annus horribilus' as North End almost ended up out of the Football League altogether. However, for Thomas, just approaching his 27th birthday at the time, it was the start of a period of his career he now calls the 'best' period of 15 years as a professional.

"I couldn't wait to get back up to the north west at the time," JT told The One And Only earlier this week. "Tommy Booth was the manager, assisted by Brian Kidd, at the time and Brian had a big say in bringing me here from my Everton and Bolton days.

"I just thought that the north west was the place to play football, even though I'm from the Midlands originally where you have Wolves, West Brom, Villa, Birmingham - big clubs - I just felt this was the place to play football."

The off the field problems were growing for the Lilywhites, but Thomas put these problems aside when crossing the white line and went on to finish top scorer and player of the year.

"Once you go onto the football field or the training pitch you tend not to worry about anything, you get away from everything. When I came here it was like a breath of fresh air for me to come back up to the north west to play football and I enjoyed it under Tommy and Brian.

"I don't think the players really thought about the re-election, you just wanted to get results and get out of it. In those days you basically did get voted in anyway and at the start of the season we didn't think we'd be anyway near that end of the table, we thought we'd be pushing for promotion. It was hard, because the Club didn't have a lot of money and I remember they even had to ask to buy things like bandages and tie ups and things like that.

"I remember the Scunthorpe game that everyone talks about. I think there was only two and half thousand on that game. I was injured at the time and watched the game from the stands, but I seem to remember it being down to the electric strike or something similar.

"It was Mel Tottoh's first game, who was just playing amateur football and came out to play because we had quite a few injuries at the time. We didn't have the biggest of squads anyway; but we did have some good players because even the next season, when Mr McGrath took over, there were still a few of the players who were the main men in the promotion year; Bob Atkins, Gary Brazil and myself did okay when we got promoted.

"One game that sticks in my mind was the a game at Aldershot the previous season. We lost the game 4-0, but you'd have thought we won the game 4-0 because we took about 400 fans and they were going barmy - it was a great atmosphere."

The appointment of 'Mr McGrath' was the key to the Club's renaissance and Thomas would go on to play for him twice during his career: "Mr McGrath came in and changed everything around and made the discipline and the training a lot stricter and he brought more professionalism to the Club, but the year before when Tommy was in charge I got 18 goals that season, which was great for me, but as a team you are all in it together and want to try and win as many games as you can.

"It was the best time in my career playing at Preston North End and I absolutely loved it."

"He was a big strong man and straight away his presence frightened people, but his discipline was, I thought, a good thing at the Club and he was good for the players; he was a players manager. He would look after his players; he wanted us to have the best - we were struggling with money, but he made sure we got training kit and boots, he did well for us.

"He changed the style of the play completely, bringing in the sweeper system. It didn't just come overnight, we worked on it in training and all through pre-season and he did it all the Club as well, so that the 'A' team and the reserves were playing exactly the same, so if they had to move up, they were ready to go into what every position it be, in the first team or the reserves. He brought some good players in as well.

"Big Sam came along and Les Chapman was fantastic as an assistant - the two of them [John McGrath and Les] were great together. Les was the funniest person I ever met in football and he was great to have around the squad for team spirit. Oshor Williams came along and was good in the dressing room as well, so we had some good people in there, including Frank Worthington."

The second important addition to the Club was actually not a person but the change in playing surface. Many players talk critically about what the plastic did for their careers, but John found it good to play on and scored plenty of goals on it.

"I found it okay; I didn't mind it. It was a bit sore when you did a slide tackle on, which I did every now and again, but it gave us an advantage. A lot of teams came with a negative attitude, so straight away we were really 1-0 up mentally.

"We only three games at home all season and the opponents were quite negative about it. We trained on it every day to get used to it and we also enjoyed going away from home, because we passed it around away from home as well because we had some good players.

"If I remember rightly the Halifax game was my first hat-trick of the season. I think it was two headers and a volley. We always used to take a near post corner and I was just hanging round at the back post and Big Sam would flick them on. I think Gary Brazil crossed one for a header and the other was a half volley, so they were great memories.

"It was the best time in my career playing at Preston North End and I absolutely loved it.

"A lot of the credit has to go down to John McGrath for what he brought into the Club. He brought a fantastic team spirit with a never say die attitude. We always thought we were going to get something. Take Bob Atkins, he wasn't involved early on in the season, but Mr McGrath saw him play a few times in the reserves and he was fantastic to have as your sweeper, because he could pass the ball right or left footed, so as soon as he saw him play in the reserves he was right into the first team. And then we had Big Sam and Alex Jones alongside him, so we used to go up the field and press the opposition, so they had to hit long early balls and our three would pick up everything.

"The gates soon quickly went up from 2,000 the year before to five six, eight thousand and the average was probably close to 10,000. That night we won 1-0 and if I remember I was made up, because I had made one for Gary Brazil because he made a lot of goals for me. We got quite a few goals that season, close to 50 between us. There were 16,500 there and it was a great night."

Despite his 28 goals in the promotion season, he was not to be involved the following year and left to join former club Bolton, but after a spell at his boyhood heroes West Brom he returned to Deepdale in 1990.

"I wasn't playing every game; for some reason John McGrath didn't want me at the Club. Only he knows why, because I never caused any problems, any of the players will tell you, a lot of them were saying 'I can't understand why he's let you go', but Bolton wanted me so I joined them, because I was living in Bolton anyway, so it was ideal to stay in the north west. I then got a move to West Brom, but I came back.

"West Brom were my hometown club, who I followed as a kid, but I never really had to think twice about coming back, when Preston came in I felt I wanted to go, because I had such a good time first time round.

"John McGrath got the sack, Les Chapman took over and within two or three weeks I had signed back for the Club. I had a chat with Les and said 'no problem'. We were struggling a little bit, but I came back and scored three goals in the end of the that season to help us stay up. We went to Shrewsbury, I think it was, on the final day of the season needing to win or draw to stay up, but results went for us anyway.

"Les was a really nice man - as I've already said, the funniest man I ever met in football - but as for a manager he was probably too funny. He probably needed to get someone in with him who could do all the Mr McGrath stuff, as Les was a really nice man and everybody loved him."

After 20 minutes with John Thomas, it is probably fair to say that his description of Chapman could well be applied to him and many 30-something North Enders would no doubt agree.