The Blackburn Rovers boss loves football. He loves the work he is doing back at this football club. But more than anything he loves his family and he is caught in the middle.

For football was his first love. It is all he has ever known and all he wants to do, as painful as the sacrifices are.

Approaching a remarkable 900 games in management, Mowbray speaks with the perspective of someone who has seen almost everything the sport can throw at him. Triumphs and setbacks, promotions and relegations, celebrations and heartbreak. Yet nothing tested him quite like the challenge that arrived away from the touchline.

Three years ago, a cancer diagnosis forced him to step back from the game that has defined his life. Two lengthy operations followed. For many, such an ordeal would have been a natural point to walk away, to retreat towards family life and quieter days. Instead, it reinforced what football meant to him.

"I feel very honoured to have been in football since the day I left school at 16," he said.

"I love footballers, I love being around them. I've had a pretty serious illness three years ago or whenever it was that I was diagnosed. Just to come back to work... it's what I do, it's who I am, I think."

Mowbray giving instructions from the touchline (Image: CameraSport - Lee Parker)

There is a sincerity to Mowbray that has long distinguished him in a sport increasingly driven by short-term demands and instant judgement. His success has been built as much on empathy as expertise; on understanding people as readily as systems and shape.

"I think I am as I am as a human being; I'd like to think respectful until there's a lack of respect back," he says. "Generally I'm there to help the footballers get better and to improve and to help the team win so that the supporters who spend their hard-earned cash coming to watch us home and away feel as if they're getting value for money."

It is a philosophy forged across decades in dressing rooms. The veteran manager believes contemporary football sometimes overlooks the human side of leadership.

"I do feel that some young managers need to learn the soft skills of football," he continued. "Everybody has to learn how to deal with human beings because they all have their own issues, they all have their own lives and problems."

The example he gives is revealing. One of his players is preparing to become a father. For Mowbray, there is no debate over priorities.

"You look after your partner. Forget the football," is his advice.

"I know we pay you, but forget the football. You go and hold her hand while she's giving birth."

It sounds simple. To Mowbray, it is fundamental. Respect people first and footballers will repay that trust.

"I care about people, I care about their lives, I care about their families," he explains. "Somewhere down the line he's going to run through a brick wall or throw his body on the line to stop something or score an amazing goal and come and run and celebrate. That's how you manage people, I think."

Mowbray led Rovers to promotion from League One (Image: PA)

The words carry weight because they come from lived experience. Nearly 900 matches into a managerial journey that began at Ipswich Town in 2002 and has taken him through Hibernian, West Bromwich Albion, Celtic, Middlesbrough, Coventry City, Sunderland, Birmingham City and Blackburn Rovers - twice, Mowbray remains a student of the game rather than a self-appointed professor.

Mowbray says he would not be able to do what he does on the football side of the job were it not for the people immediately around him at Brockhall and Ewood.

"I sit there with no ego about tactics and stuff like that.

"We've all watched a couple of the games of the opposition that are coming away and we've all got opinions and there's an open forum and then we decide what the best way is to go and approach this game."

That collaborative approach reflects the man. Even after decades in football, Mowbray remains curious, receptive and willing to listen. Perhaps overcoming serious illness has further sharpened that perspective.

What emerges most clearly, however, is the sacrifice.

Football continues to pull him away from the everyday moments he treasures most. With two of his three sons at university his family is scattered, although his youngest is with him in East Lancashire now, pursuing his own football journey - on his own merit - with Rovers' Academy.

Mowbray lives with the reality familiar to many in the game: hotel rooms, training grounds and motorway miles replacing evenings at home.

"Some day I'll be back on that beach walking my dog and looking for the football results at the weekend," he says.

Not yet, though. The game still has its hold on him.

Mowbray talks about helping players rediscover the joy they felt as children, finding "their inner child again where they love the game". In many ways, he sounds as though he is describing himself.

The cancer battle changed many things. It gave him a deeper awareness of life beyond football and a greater appreciation of time with the people closest to him.

"I still miss my family," he admits. "I'm not eating my dinner with my wife every night or going to the movies or going to the theatre, or watching a series on telly that we're both watching together. I'm watching it in Blackburn and I'm phoning her saying 'Are you ready? It's 8 o'clock we've got to watch The Traitors tonight', or whatever it might be.

"Do I miss that? Yes. Sitting on the sofa next to my wife having a cup of tea, eating a chocolate biscuit. Yes I miss all that but the sacrifice is I'm doing what I love, and she appreciates I'm doing what I love, and I'll continue to do it as long as I can in life, I think."

And there, perhaps, lies the essence of Tony Mowbray: a football man approaching a significant milestone; a survivor who fought his way back from serious illness; a manager who values compassion as highly as tactical detail; a husband and father living with the push and pull between family and profession.

Some day there will be that beach, that dog walk, those weekends spent checking results from afar.

For now, though, football still needs Tony Mowbray, and judging by the passion with which he speaks about it, Tony Mowbray still needs football.