Andy Jones leant forward and thrust out his mobile. “Have a look,” he said. “Since the Newport game in mid-October, I’ve had 1,214 texts and I try and answer every one of them. And I try and reply to every phone call. My phone bill is probably incredible. (Phone rings) I’m sorry, just one second . . .”

If you were wondering, that’s an average of nearly 50 texts a day. And to judge from an hour in Jones’s company this week, he has been fielding calls about every five minutes since Paulton Rovers, the villagers from Zamaretto League first division south & west, beat Chippenham Town in the FA Cup fourth qualifying round and drew Norwich City at home in today’s first round proper.

Jones is Paulton’s manager. This week he was also a call centre, logistics expert, spokesman, consultant and strategist, one of a dozen volunteers helping to make the club as ready as they’ll ever be for their day at the epicentre of national sporting attention.

“At times like this, everyone needs to muck in and do the best they can,” he said. Not that there has been a time like this for a club making their first-round debut. “I’m dealing with the temporary stand people, the fence people, everything,” he said. “Tickets, T-shirts, merchandise, whatever needs organising. I’ve got a good business brain — not too intelligent but quite a bit of common sense. I deal with everything, really.”

On the table in front of him was a pink application form for the right to line the streets next to Paulton’s Winterfield Road ground with cones. Before the magic of the Cup, the bureaucracy of the Cup.

“We’ve had Living The Dream T-shirts printed,” he said. “Because basically that’s been my caption. We are Living The Dream. I think we’ve had 1,500 of those done and they’re going like hot cakes. Scarves done . . . (Phone rings) Do you want to stop your tape recorder a minute, sorry . . .”

In charge since 2005, the 40-year-old’s day job is a night job. He runs Flowervision, a successful flower wholesale business (branches in Bristol, Nottingham, London, Southampton . . . and Norwich) started by his father, a former Bristol City director, 48 years ago. Three of Paulton’s players work for Jones, who normally starts at about 3am each morning.

If Paulton have a distant evening game, he will get home at 10am, have a couple of hours’ sleep, then set off for the match. “That’s what we do at this level,” he said. “My wife is the most understanding lady in the world. But she’d like to see a bit more of me.”

This week she needed only to open a newspaper or turn on the television.

Paulton’s crowds average about 250 but the attendance this lunchtime will be close to ten times that. Add the prize and gate money to the income from live television coverage and the club expect to earn more than £100,000 from the tie — covering the playing budget for three years.

“We won’t change our ways,’ Les Rogers, the treasurer, said. “If we think our beer’s not at the right price, we’ll buy it from someone different. If somebody’s spending too much on phone calls, that needs to be put right.” Luckily, Jones didn’t hear that. He was on a call.

“Prime example, our chairman.” Rogers said. “He wanted to get hinges for some gates. They wanted £80 for them and he said, ‘No, that’s too dear, I’ll go somewhere else.’ So we’re getting this money coming in and we’re still carrying on as we were.”

“There’s no one here for the money because we don’t pay big money,” Jones said. “They’re here for the love of the club.

“The team spirit is incredible. There’s not one bad person in the changing room. We are so united. A lot of people would say that of their football team, but this is the most incredible bunch of lads I’ve worked with and because of the lack of money, you’ve got to have that spirit.”

Like many of its non-League siblings, Winterfield Road feels like a large social club that happens to have a small football team. The bars and function rooms are far bigger and nicer than the dressing rooms. The stands are tidy and tiny, dwarfed by the slag heap behind one of the goals. The village pigeon club has coops round the back of the main stand.

Population 5,000, Paulton is hidden amid classically English countryside: green fields creased with gentle hills, quirky place names such as “Chew Magna”, pubs and streets named in honour of railway lines murdered by Dr Beeching long ago and signs making empty threats of speed cameras.

The village is an expanding commuter enclave half an hour’s drive south of Bristol with a few cute old buildings and some modern constructions that make you wonder how houses built 40 years ago can look more decayed than those that must be 200 years older.

The coal industry died out decades ago, while a large printworks closed in 2005 and is now a rubble-strewn wasteland blighting the landscape on the main road into the village, watched over by some bored sheep. Today, though, there will be nothing but excitement, energy and smiles.

“We’re a friendly family club,” Jones said. “We want Norwich to go home on their coach — or their plane, or however Delia gets here — and say, ‘What a lovely club.’ I want everyone to leave this ground and say, ‘Well done, Paulton Rovers, what a great effort.’ ” (Phone rings . . .)

Explore Football

• Premier League

• Football League

• Scotland

• European Football

• International Football

• TheGame

• Live Match Tracker

• The Fink Tank

• Fantasy Football