SWINDON Town legend Don Rogers said League Cup winning manager Danny Williams ‘made the whole place smile’ during his tenure at the County Ground.

Williams, who passed away at the age of 94 over the weekend, led Town to their only domestic trophy success – the English League Cup – as well as the Anglo-Italian League Cup and promotion to the second tier in the same year.

Rogers scored twice in front of over 98,000 spectators at Wembley as the young striker gave Williams one of his most prized possessions – a League Cup winners’ medal – thanks to a 3-1 win over English footballing giants, Arsenal.

One of Swindon’s most celebrated players of all time, Rogers reminisced of his days under the stewardship of the jovial Yorkshireman and admitted you would struggle to find someone with a bad word to say about his old manager.

Rogers said: “Danny was jovial – he made the whole place smile, and everybody liked him.

“The four or five years we had together, I know the team was doing well, but we were all laughing all the time and there was a great atmosphere at the club – most of that was down to the manager.

“Everything was so happy at the time and it was just a pleasure to be there with him.

“I remember one time, he was telling John Trollope all about a player who was very quick and tricky and another player looked up and said, ‘he’s not playing, Danny’, and this was just before the game.

“That’s the sort of thing that happened under Danny, that’s why it was always funny.”

Rogers enjoyed some of the best days of his career under the stewardship of Williams and admitted that the Rotherham record appearance holder’s relaxed approaching to tactics was hugely influential in getting the best out of Swindon’s mercurial left winger and his team-mates.

The 73-year-old said Williams’ status as a club great cannot be understated, and he thanked him for everything he achieved at the club.

Rogers said: “He helped my career on its way because he just used to say to me ‘I’ll see you at twenty to five’, before a 3pm kick off.

“The only extra thing he did really was he gave me confidence because he was always telling me how good he thought I was.

“There were no special instructions, he just let me play my game and, in that respect, he was a big help to me.

“There wasn’t too much on the coaching side of it, he just used to let us go out there and organise ourselves most of the time.

“That wasn’t the done thing back then in terms of management, but that’s just how he was.

“He was a massive figure in the club’s history because he was the one who put that really good side together.”