As a strong, quite-tall-for-his-age, teenage striker, scoring for fun in Southampton’s Tyro League,

Francis Benali earned himself a fistful of caps for England Schoolboys.

But then he pretty much stopped growing; and, after he had spent the 1986-87 season as the main starter at No.9 for the Reserves, the manager, Chris Nicholl, decided that he had neither the touch nor the temperament to cope with “someone up his back, kicking and frustrating him.”

From now on, Benali was, positionally speaking, going backwards. He played most of the next two seasons at No.11 for the Reserves, but when he made his first-team debut as a substitute for Kevin Moore v Derby, early in the 1988-89 season, it was to play at left-back in a defensive reshuffle. The die was cast and Franny was on his way to a sustained run in that position, the following season. But not permanently so. Over the next three seasons, he would be competing with Micky Adams, save when Nicholl’s successor, Ian Branfoot, accommodated them both by playing Adams wide left. Adams did not survive Alan Ball’s take-over, but now Simon Charlton came in at left-back and Franny had a spell at centre-back, although he would then play out his career at left-back – seeing off fleeting competition from Lee Todd and Patrick Colleter – and was threatening to chalk up 400 appearances for the Saints when Wayne Bridge converted, just as Franny had, from No.11 to No.3.

Franny enjoyed playing at centre-back, facing the likes of Shearer and Klinsmann. He had less time to think there, but that was perhaps a plus for an instinctive player: exploiting the greater time and space available on the flank, sweeping forward to cross precisely, was not his forte. Yet, as Jeremy Wilson has argued, in his profiles of Southampton’s Cult Heroes, Franny’s blemishes tended only to add to his “cult” status. So what if he made more memorable goal-line clearances – notably against Wimbledon in the “Great Escape” of  1999 and against Millwall, in the FA Cup-run of 2003, – than he scored goals? So he didn’t get forward, like Jason Dodd on the other flank, to blast the occasional cracking goal,

but that makes his one first-team goal – a bullet-header from some distance to score from a Le Tissier free-kick – all the more cherishable.

And worthy of a commemorative T-shirt, bearing the legend I was there when Franny scored. Some would even say that his 11 red cards enhanced his “cult” reputation, especially when he refused to be intimidated by a bigger guy. Think John Fashanu, Plough Lane, March 1990. However you weigh the pluses and minuses, Franny had become used to bouncing back. But Bridge adjusted to left-back – well enough to make 113 consecutive Premiership appearances there. His last game for the club was at Millwall for the FA Cup replay but although he travelled with the squad to Cardiff, he was not among the subs for the Final: the cover on the bench for Bridge was Danny Higginbotham.

In the dressing room afterwards, Danny offered his medal to Franny – “You’ve been here a long time. You deserve it more than I do.” A “choked” Benali declined the offer, but got his medal when the FA sent three spares for players involved along the road to the Millennium.

He opted not to drop down the divisions, apart from a flirtation with Eastleigh in 2006, but to divide his time between his businesses – a restaurant, Kutis; and a building- firm he’d started with his father-in-law – and part-time duties for Southampton FC. Much of his early work for the club was as a match-day ambassador, but Franny was a full-timer with the Academy in 2003-04, coaching the U-12s and helping out with the Reserves on a daily basis. He “loved the idea of coaching – or even managing” the club and, when Harry Redknapp left in December 2006, Sir Clive Woodward brokered an arrangement whereby Matt Le Tissier and Franny would take over.

But Rupert Lowe, having appointed Woodward to think the unthinkable, was looking for a man with badges and did not share Sir Clive’s belief in a couple of unbadged cult heroes. Franny continued to coach locally, at Romsey for a while and latterly at Colden Common, looking after their U-18s in the county’s Youth League. And he has joined the team of coaches at the Le Tissier school as well as setting up an players’ agency with, with his great mate.

In more recent years Franny has embarked on an increasingly tough series of personal challenges. In October 2016, he completed an extraordinary feat of running and cycling to all 44 Premier League and Championship stadiums in 2 weeks. He ran a marathon and cycled 75 miles each day and, in the process, raised over £350,000 for Cancer Research and he was later awarded the freedom of the city of Southampton. But that was not enough for this most determined of men. In April 2019 it was announced that Benali would race seven Ironmens in seven days, as part of his aim to raise £1million for Cancer Research UK. Despite being hospitalised, he still managed to complete five, realising his target.

When he is not putting himself through untold agony he often pops up as an articulate TV pundit when Southampton are featured in live matches and in November 2019 he was appointed an official Club Ambassador. He was made an MBE in the 2019 New Year’s Honours list. In April 2020 the Covid-19 lockdown did not prevent him running a marathon on a treadmill at his Southampton home to raise funds for the Saints foundation and NHS charities (see scrapbook section for Guardian article).