For the rest of his life, Brentford head coach Thomas Frank will never forget the moment he learned Robert Rowan was dead.

Rowan, the club’s technical director, was due to meet Frank and co-director of football Phil Giles for a leadership conference in London.

However, when Frank arrived at the venue on that fateful morning in November, he discovered the 28-year-old was not there. Suddenly his phone rang.

“I will never forget it,” Frank tells Standard Sport. “Phil called me up and I thought, ‘Bloody Hell, they are late those two” and then Phil said it, ‘Rob is dead’.”

It is still evident how much Rowan’s death affected Frank and, for that matter, everyone at Brentford.

The Dane chooses his words carefully when discussing Rowan, pausing every now and then to make sure he does justice to someone who was clearly a close friend as well as a colleague.

“Just by speaking about it I get goosebumps.” Brentford head coach Thomas Frank

The fact that Rowan died of sudden heart failure and neither Frank, nor anyone at the club, had the chance to say goodbye makes it even harder.

“Just by speaking about it I get goosebumps,” he says. “He was a friend. He was one person I would definitely have kept in contact with after I left Brentford, 100 per cent, because I would not stay here forever, he would not have stayed forever.

“I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to him — to say that I really like you or I enjoy your company and your friendship. That was tough.

“Then, on top of that, there was the way he was as a person, because he was always around everybody.

“So if somebody was a little bit unhappy, he always came in with a smile or a joke. That was very tough. And the difficult thing is, life goes on.”

That is something Frank appreciates, having dealt with tragedy before: his father-in-law died of cancer around the time his eldest daughter was born.

However, the death of Rowan came just weeks after Frank had been named head coach, following Dean Smith’s departure to Aston Villa. The 45-year-old had plenty of problems to deal with on the pitch, such as a mounting injury crisis, even before the devastating loss of Rowan — a man Brentford’s co-director of football, Rasmus Ankersen, called “the social glue at the training ground”.

Frank, barely a month into the job, had to try to keep the whole place together.

“It was very, very tough, unbelievably tough. On top of everything you just feel drained, if that makes sense,” he says. “And you know, when you park your car out there, you have to go up and smile again and go again. That’s what you need to do. That’s the most exhausting part of the job.

“No matter what happened in my personal life, no matter what happened in games you are winning or losing, you need to be up.”

The death of Rowan was not the sole factor in Brentford’s rocky start to life under Frank, when they won just one of his first 10 games.

Nothing was going the Dane’s way and an injury to Emiliano Marcondes in December against West Brom summed it up.

The midfielder had put in a brilliant performance to earn his side a point, only to severely damage his ankle ligaments deep into injury-time.

A week later, Frank was cursing his luck again when his plan against Swansea went out of the window inside a minute when they fell behind due to an individual error.

“You are thinking, ‘Please, football god, I think I have learned now. We’ve lost six games and please just give us a little bit’,” he says.

Frank has now steadied the ship and Brentford head into tonight’s game at Barnet on a seven-match unbeaten run.

The poignant memorial service arranged by the club for Rowan in December has been cited as a key factor in the turnaround, which leaves Brentford pulling clear of relegation.

However, it is impossible to overlook Frank’s role, especially after meeting him. For him, Rowan’s death is another reminder to “live light-hearted and smile with energy”.

He most certainly does that now, an outlook typified by what happens when we enter his office for this interview.

On his desk is a box of 100 Jaffa Cakes, a gift making light-hearted reference to Brentford’s away kit, which many believe resembles the popular snack.

Frank instantly bursts out laughing, before offering them round to everyone in the office. He has never tried them before but gladly takes the plunge.

They are given the nod of approval, something he is finally getting, too, after the toughest of starts.