IT was a year ago tomorrow that a new era started at St Mary's.

After a drawn-out power struggle, chairman Rupert Lowe and his boardroom allies resigned en masse on Friday, June 30, 2006.

They left just three days before an EGM called by Michael Wilde was expected to result in the Southampton Leisure Holdings PLC shareholders voting them out anyway.

As Lowe et al went out the exit' door, in came Wilde's chosen few to replace them.

They were a mixture of new and familiar faces to the fans desperate for a new broom to sweep through St Mary's.

On the one hand, the likes of Lawrie McMenemy and Mary Corbett - elected to the football board - and PLC non-exec director Patrick Trant were familiar names and faces to many fans.

But the men who were handed the executive power to run the club on a day-to-day basis weren't so well known.

Chief executive Jim Hone and operations manager Lee Hoos had worked together at Fulham FC, while non-exec PLC chairman Ken Dulieu was virtually unknown, having never worked in professional football at all.

Hone, Hoos and Dulieu had met a group of fans at the Northam Social Club barely a fortnight earlier, but delays in printing Wilde's eagerly-awaited Planning for Success' manifesto did not go down too well with the assembled throng.

When it was completed and available to read, the 38-page document - primarily written by Hone - preached a new start at Saints with a football first' philosophy.

To those who yearned for Lowe's removal after nine controversial years, most were just happy to see the back of the chairman.

There were some not convinced by the new directors, but they were very much in the minority.

The vast majority were keen to herald in the new era.

Twelve months on, what has changed?

The Daily Echo takes a look at the first 12 months of Wilde's regime in today's paper.