It’s marvellously cheering to learn of success borne of values-laden endeavour.

A hamlet north of Nailsworth in Gloucestershire gives its name to the local football team, Forest Green Rovers. Regular readers of these pages will know how we love to wade into waters too deep and splash around trying to cause waves. In this way, we’ve been frantically critical of FIFA and joyful of G Southgate Esq.

This, then can’t be resisted. A chap whose fortune was made through concern for the planet has enabled the club to leap from one football league to another. What pleases far more – given our lack of knowledge of the game – is that his money leveraged transformation of the club’s exo-structure.

Eco-entrepreneur Dale Vince has put his mouth where his money is by ensuring players and fans no longer munch on meat and dairy products while at The New Lawn. The ground and buildings are powered by solar panels and there’s a charging point for electric cars.

Sustainable use of the Earth’s resources is his motivation, a mindset which can be easily absorbed to inform how lightly we tread on the planet. Nothing contentious there. Except that usually it’s the other way around. Usually, our modus operandi is fashioned by those whose eye is on their own wallet resident in their own pocket.

Perhaps this kind of eco warring will catch on? It takes a quantum leap of the imagination, naturally, yet believing evolution is possible when principled concern funds it seems a cheerful way to glide leagues ahead.