How Sheffield Wednesday fans turned one man's house into Willy Wonka's storeroom - and delighted two charities

The 43-year-old engineering consultant and lifelong Sheffield Wednesday had stumbled across a tweet posted by his football club. It showed their senior players holding chocolate eggs aloft. And it sent a shiver down his spine.

Rogers is one part of The Wednesday Week, a long-standing podcast that last month launched an effort to encourage fellow Wednesdayites to donate Easter eggs to charitable causes, namely the Sheffield Children's Hospital and PACT. Both charities care for children struck by serious illness and those on the podcast felt it would be a nice idea to collect 100 or so eggs to be shared between the two and spread a little joy from the Wednesday family to those who need it most.

At last count and helped along no end by the reach of Sheffield Wednesday's social media clout, their charity push has landed a remarkable 659 eggs, leaving Ash's front room looking like - in his words - 'Willy Wonka's store cupboard'. Sofas have had to be moved out, family television viewing postponed.

It's been a team effort, all members of the podcast coming together on matchdays to collect the eggs in the shadow of Hillsborough stadium and two brave teenage Owls dressing up in fancy dress to pose in photos with match-going kids, Wednesday players and Danny Röhl himself. Speaking to The Star, Ash's voice quivers with pride once or twice when asked about the response the effort has received.

"Something that came out of the blue on the group chat, we didn't think it would blow up the way it did," he said. "It snowballed pretty quickly from there.

"My first thought was that if we get 100 eggs, it would be fantastic. I warned the guys at the charities that since we were splitting them between two, they might get 50 eggs and whether they could handle that many. They were delighted!

"We were massively surprised. We're a podcast who talks about the club - not always in a positive light - we do criticise when we feel it's warranted, we speak honestly. We have a few listeners and don't get me wrong, we're not topping the iTunes charts, but you are wary of how you're being perceived and how things might be taken. The donations and the support it's had on social media has been incredible and it's taken us aback to be honest.

"The club said they'd help us where we can and all I really was expecting was for us to be given somewhere to pitch up a table on-site. Fair play to them, they really did help. On social media they were pushing things out and they did that message themselves which has got it to where it is. It got bigger and bigger and more than I could ever have imagined."

Advised that some children won't be able to eat the chocolate donated, some will be given colouring books, pencils and other gifts to ensure as many children as possible receive the benefit of the joyfulness of the Wednesday fan base's generosity. The Wednesday Week do as much as they can in a charitable sense, using money received from their streaming platforms to buy tickets for those who may not otherwise be able to afford them.

The success of the Easter egg collection has further instilled an ambition to do as much as they can with their online platform to help those in need.

Ash said: "We're lucky that we get some funds trickling in from Twitter and YouTube, that all goes into what we call our Community Fund. We've been able to buy tickets for people and that's all we ever want to do with it, we're entirely not-for-profit and we're not bothered about making any money, it's for other people.

"We want to use the podcast to try and give something back. These are tough times at the minute and we've got other plans coming up that will hopefully go off as well as the eggs did."