'We're a bit of an oddity' Exeter up for the cup after 20 years of fan ownership

League One side host Lutonin the League Cup tonight but as their chair says: Tm sad at how other clubs judge success’

- Ben Fisher

It is difficult to imagine there are too many other clubs where the manager can freely walk home from matches, regardless of the result, or has been gifted a tailor-made oak coffee table by a fan. Better still, the table in Gary Caldwell's office at Exeter's revamped Cliff Hill training base, given to him by a supporter who is a carpenter, has an integrated tactics board and the pitch dimensions are to the scale of the surface at their St James Park home. "The supporters go over and above in terms of what they give to this club," Caldwell says.

Then again Exeter are somewhat unique given their status as a fan-owned club, the 20-year anniversary of which is this month, a cause for celebration and a move that has since prompted intrigue and praise in their model from rivals and government.

The Exeter City Supporters' Trust has about 3,600 members, each of whom pay a minimum of £24 a year. "You always hear players at clubs say: 'It's a family club,' but we're owned by the family," says the club president, Julian Tagg, a lifelong fan who was once Exeter's Under-11s coach and a player-manager in the reserves, as well as a ball boy. "It takes us a long time to do anything, an inordinate amount of time, but when we do it, we do it right." It is an incredible tale of community, steel and sheer hard work, and an endearing one, too.

Andy Gillard, among the army of volunteers who shovelled Exeter out of the brown stuff when they were relegated from the football league in 2003, is the longstanding club secretary. "It was hand to mouth and you would split the tasks up, and if you needed to stick your hand down a drain, you stuck your hand down a drain," he says.