A retired accountant has spent more than 500 hours making a scale model of a football stadium from materials such as matchsticks.

Chris Jepson, a life-long Wolverhampton Wanderers fan, began creating the model of the old Molineux ground in October 2016 and managed to finish it in time for their promotion to the Premier League.

The 71-year-old hopes to display the model at the club’s official museum before auctioning it off for a prostate cancer charity.

Mr Jepson said it had always been on his bucket list to once again build the old stadium – which he finally completed using matchsticks, coffee stirrers, rabbit hutch wire and other everyday items.

Despite his work being labelled the “Matchstick Molineux”, he has said there is more to the model than that.

Wolverhampton Wanderers v Ipswich Town – Sky Bet Championship – Molineux
The real Molineux stadium in Wolverhampton (Chris Radburn/PA)

Mr Jepson said: “I always loved the old stadium, there was something about it which was magic to me.

“Being a long-suffering Wolves fan, it’s always been something I’ve had on my bucket list to do – to build a stadium that looked like it did in the old days.

“I made it because I wanted to make it, but I didn’t make it for myself. One of the ideas behind it was, once I’d made it, it would finish up in the home of a loving Wolves fan that would appreciate it or perhaps even in the Wolves museum.”

Speaking of his motivation for building the model, Mr Jepson added: “I’ve been a long-suffering prostate cancer patient, been through lots of procedures and operations over the years, and it would be a little bit of a way of giving something back to either the National Health or to prostate cancer research.”

Mr Jepson, from Kidderminster, said he had set up a meeting with the club after they expressed an interest in the model being shown in the museum.