NEIL Dalton is still in his Carlisle United tracksuit when he arrives for the interview. "I'm too precious about my own gear," chuckles the physiotherapist, who marks a 1,000-game milestone by recalling his fading past as a dressing-room nuisance.

"I used to be a bit of an arsonist," laughs the man who has, over the years, applied surgical spirit and a flame to a pair of Luke Joyce's plimsolls, a cardigan owned by Michael Bridges, and a folder that appeared to contain coaching course documents belonging to Anthony Williams (it didn't, but the goalkeeper still pursued Dalton across the car park, throwing punches).

"I've probably mellowed now," he insists. "Anyway - I don't want it done to myself. That's why I come to work in my Carlisle United gear."

The growing age divide between Dalton and United's young players is another reason he has laid down his matches - even though, when this Brunton Park stalwart threw a 40th birthday party recently, most of the squad still turned up.

Another staging post is reached this afternoon, for the visit of Wycombe Wanderers takes him into four figures as Carlisle's physio. "Old! That's what it makes you feel," says Dalton, whose life of magic-sponge duty was honoured last summer by a League Medical Association long-service award.

His outside interests are not entirely of the establishment, though. "There's not many with my acquired taste," he says of a love of punk music that continually baffles many at United. "I'm a bit of a neanderthal to the boys. I can't grow a Mohican any more but you'll still catch me with a pint in a strange place, in my oxblood Doc Martens, moshing or headbanging."

Dalton, himself no stranger to a tattoo, is wistful as he talks about punk heroes like the ink-smothered Roi Pearce. Another obsession - more conventionally for a physio - is the human anatomy.

"In 1998, doing my degree, you got the chance to watch autopsies," he says. "I would go every single week. The stench was foul, like a butcher's. But I was fascinated. Maybe I'm just a weirdo."

These are diversions Dalton may not have expected when starting out on this most durable of United careers. The man known universally as "Dolly" began as a 10-year-old left-back, training once a week in the club's Neil Centre before progressing to the YTS ranks in 1992.

"First-year's wage was £27.50," he smiles. "You could get a night out and your bus fare from that. I painted the boot room, swept the terraces, pumped up the old balls by hand. You were a lackey, basically. But it was a great grounding."

Dalton is modest about his ability compared with contemporaries like Rory Delap, Paul Murray and Matt Jansen, and says the opportunity to shadow former physio Peter Hampton intrigued him. "I loved gory stuff, operations and so on, so in my second year YTS I made sure I got the jobs around the physio room. I'd ask Pete the odd question and it went from there."

Dalton continued playing for the reserves as he eagerly took his physio qualifications, succeeding Hampton at 21 when chairman Michael Knighton swung his axe at the Mervyn Day regime in 1997. Yet he also admits it took him time to accept he wasn't going to be a footballer. "I still had that jealousy. In some of the bad years, I saw some of the players coming through the door and thought, bloody hell, I'm better than these.

"I carried on training and playing with the reserves, and also the odd time for Gretna and Workington. I once got a call off the chief scout at Cambridge. John Beck must have watched a game and they asked me to go for a trial. I started laughing and [the scout] said, 'What's the matter, don't you want to be a footballer?' I said I'm the physio at Carlisle United, I really can't.

"There was another game for the ressies at Doncaster when I was 30. I was smoking at the time, liked a drink, and after 60 minutes I got cramp in both hamstrings and groins. We had a 17-year-old left-back on the bench and I thought to myself, 'What are you doing?' I came off and never played for the club again."

Dalton rolls his eyes at this memory. "I was never cut out to be a footballer. I could have bummed around and got a year here or there, but I wouldn't have had a career this long. So no regrets."

As physio, Dalton's first vivid memory is of helping a woozy Jansen back onto the pitch after being flattened by Gary Brabin's elbow at Blackpool. He also had to work, initially, under a strange regime that saw the egocentric Knighton "manager" along with coaches John Halpin and David Wilkes.

"Michael never really had anything to do with the team," Dalton says. "He came into the dressing-room a couple of times, but got shouted down. I remember Tony Caig telling him in no uncertain terms that it wasn't his place. A lot of it with Michael was just for the cameras and publicity. And to be fair, he gave me my chance."

Dalton's diligence and expertise have since been appreciated by upwards of 20 managers and countless players, and his Carlisle roots show when he is asked to pick his most memorable game from 1,000. "That has got to be Stevenage, at Stoke [the 2005 Conference play-off final victory]. It's the only time I've cried at football. If we'd not gone up, you don't know how long we could have sustained the wage bill we had.

"When the final whistle went, Simmo [manager Paul Simpson] ran five yards onto the pitch, then turned round. The tears were running down my cheeks. He ran back and gave us a cuddle, then went off again.

"I stood there for a second, then sat in the dugout, on my tod. Maybe it was because I'm a Carlisle lad, the team I supported from a bairn and all that lark. Maybe it was because my first child had just been born - the pressure of a married man with a kid, fear of losing my job. Either way, it all came out."

Local loyalty also emerges when Dalton waves away any suggestion he may have followed Simpson to Preston in 2006. "My family are all Carlisle," he says. "It wouldn't have gone down well." He has more recently turned down Premier League and Championship offers while, after much soul-searching, he also rejected lucrative terms from Gretna 10 years ago.

"There are times when you think about it," he says. "There have been some cracking jobs for a fair whack more, but you weigh it up - two bairns at school, missus [wife Amy, an optician] from Carlisle, mam and dad Carlisle, and where do you go in life - always chasing the buck? You've got to be happy."

Work has certainly offered uplifting times amid the blood and bandages. Dalton says he proudly checks Dundee's results to monitor the heartening impact of Rory Loy, a striker he helped back from a broken leg in 2011/12. A more complex recovery is recalled involving Paul Boertien, who played on for 15 minutes against Fulham in 1997 despite his kneecap having split in three places "like the Mercedes badge", and whose comeback was delayed when supporting wire embedded into the injury, needing to be "chipped" out.

A man like Dalton cannot be squeamish at such incidents. "When you see the injury you still get the initial fright at the pit of your stomach," he says. "But then you get your bag and start running."

Has he noticed a change in players' attitudes to injury? "Footballers are more body-aware now, which is good in many ways, but it means they need more reassurance. What you've lost is that hardened aspect. Your Kev Grays, Tom Cowans - gadgies, I don't know how else to describe them. That attitude of, 'I'll be alright, I'll play Saturday'."

The harshest times have come when Dalton has told a player his career is over, a grave duty that has befallen him "six to eight" times. "I retired a 19-year-old kid, Stu Bell, Harraby lad, only played three or four games - great prospect. His knee was crumbling from the inside. Had it been now, we might have been able to save him. I went to his house, spoke to his mam and dad. It's bloody heartbreaking. Horrid."

Almost bashfully, Dalton says the all-consuming nature of his job, travelling the country at unsociable hours, gives him the occasional fantasy about seeking a simpler life as a nine-to-five delivery driver. "Then I remind myself that I've got mates who are spending 20 quid to watch a game I'm paid to be at. That's a massive reality check.

"The actual job's fantastic, but it grabs hold of you. The other week I woke up in the night, when Danny Grainger was coming back [from an ankle injury]. Three in the morning, missus and bairns asleep, and I'm lying there thinking about that idiot."

United captain Grainger's rehabilitation came after much of Dalton's workplace had been flooded, Storm Desmond having wiped out medical records and the club's gym. "You have to think on your feet. I haven't got this or that facility. I've got a box, a bench, a crash mat - now think of a circuit for Danny. The old brain cells are ticking. And we got him back a couple of weeks ahead of schedule."

Given the vast number of team-talks Dalton has heard, has he ever been tempted to transfer this acquired knowledge, like Nigel Adkins and a handful of other physios, to management? He grimaces. "I wouldn't thank you for the job. Everybody knows your business, everybody is wise after the event. You would never see the club stuck, but I wouldn't like to do it for long. I'd love the wages, mind."

A more achievable ambition is to enter United's history books. "My wife's auntie's father was Herbert Nicholson, who had 30 years [as United physio]. I've had 24 at the club so I've got another six to beat him. To still be here, hanging in, retiring on my terms - that would be nice."

The thought of passing time seems briefly startling - yet one aspect of Dalton's youth, his nickname, endures. Is there anyone out there who refers to him as Neil? "Only my mam. My dad calls us Dolly, other physios do, the surgeon we use regularly calls me Dolly, even my boy gets Dolly. Wife calls me Dol. But mothers can say anything, can't they?"