The reason why the late chairman of Dundee United knew that supporters were the important people was because he was, as he regularly maintained, first and foremost a fan of his club. No fans, no footie – Thompson new the truth of that statement.
It was highly appropriate therefore, that Tannadice was almost full and turned into a sea of tangerine as United's fans came out to show how much Thompson meant to them.

At the request of the Thompson family, ticket prices were cut to £5, and their broken hearts, so cruelly tested by the death not only of their patriarch Eddie but his son-in-law Kenneth Mitchell three days earlier, may have received a modicum of solace by seeing the large turnout of fans who played their part in what had become a tribute match.

From the 12-page testimonial in the match programme to the impeccably observed minute's silence, the keynote of the day was respect, and how Thompson earned that.

The choruses of 'There's Only One Eddie Thompson' rang out sporadically, as that often inarticulate mass, the football crowd, gave voice in its own fashion to genuine feelings of communal loss. The rituals that follow any high-profile death in football are now well-established. The instant shrine adjacent to the stadium where fans lay their shirts, scarves and floral tributes; the funeral attended by the great and good while fans congregate outside or line the route of the cortege; the players wearing black armbands; the minute's silence or applause, depending on the family and club's wishes.

There are many who fail to comprehend these rites, dismissing them as mawkish or maudlin. Those who do so are misunderstanding the nature of football itself. For many supporters, their club is part of their extended family and being a fan is perhaps the main way they express their sense of community in a society we are frequently told is disintegrating by the day.

As Thompson himself once observed: "You can change your wife, your house, your car, but you can never change your team." The mourning which has followed the passing of Eddie Thompson has been truly unique. Great players and managers are always grieved for when they die, but Thompson was 'merely' a chairman, the tenant of the owner's office. Yet not in living memory has any club chairman or owner received such comprehensively sincere tributes, and that is because Thompson was no mere chairman. He truly was the saviour of United, the fan who bought the club, transformed its fortunes and became its beating heart and soul, defying the illness which eventually took his life with quite incredible bravery to visit the stadium and attend matches almost to his death.

The mourning which has enveloped Tannadice has been more akin to the sort that accompanies a death in the family, perhaps of a beloved uncle or a pater familias, for that is what Thompson had become – the Father of Dundee United.

He would dismiss such talk, and would say again and again that he had been only a custodian. Some custodian, some man. We will not see his like again.