THE summer is a time when football managers clear their deck, shuffle their pack and look to come up with the hand that is going to bring them success in ten months ahead.
So where better to bring together four top Non-League gaffers to chew the fat like they would in their office after a game than the Grosvenor G Casino beneath the Ricoh Arena.
NLP columnists Stuart Hammonds and Alan Alger were sent to Coventry to get the views of Kidderminster Harriers’ Steve Burr, Tamworth’s Dale Belford, Nuneaton Town’s Kevin Wilkin and Liam Watson – who has just left Conference Premier Southport to take over at relegated AFC Telford United – on a range of issues concerning the beautiful game at our level. Let the tape recorder roll….
NLP: Do you think the Conference Premier will be the most evenly matched in 2013-14 than it has been for many years?
LW: You’d still have a relatively good punt at who the top five would be, but with everyone else, it depends on who gets on a run and who doesn’t. Look at Gateshead. They had troubled times last year, but they’ve made some good signings so going there will be a different proposition altogether.
DB: For us, it’s just about trying to improve on what we did last year and the gap between everybody else is shortening. As Kev proved last year, the run that Nuneaton had to go on to stay in the league was incredible.
LW: You would say that from the end of January onwards, Nuneaton were a top-half club.
DB: The teams down the bottom were having to hit championship form. We were hitting top ten form, but every time we’d won, we’d come in the dressing room and find that Nuneaton or Lincoln had won again too. That gap from the top five – or eight in my opinion – is shortening.
KW: I would be surprised if anyone ran away with it, such is the competitive nature right throughout the level. We realised that on our day, we could compete with anyone if we got lucky. We played Grimsby at the right time – five days before they had the Trophy final – for example and beat them.
SB: There are always different scenarios as to when you’re playing someone, isn’t there?
KW: There is – is it the right time? The wrong time? Has the manager just left? Have they lost a couple of players? You can try and guess, but really you can only give the answer to those kind of things after the event.
DB:We ended up playing at Ebbsfleet on a Tuesday night thinking they’d got nothing to play for because they’d been relegated on the Saturday, but Liam (Daish) had dangled the carrot of ‘Listen, we’re playing at Midddlesbrough against Gateshead, so whoever wants to run out at the Riverside Stadium better have a good game here’. We’re coming here to try and stay in the league and he’s dangling that carrot to them, which takes it away from us.
LW: One result which stood out for me was when we were down at Braintree towards the end of the season and desperately needed a win, and Barrow – who I thought at the time had a great chance of surviving – took on Ebbsfleet who had to travel there on a Tuesday night…
KW: That was the baked bean night!
LW: It was…but Ebbsfleet went up there and got a point with ten men and that, for me, relegated Barrow that night.
DB: I looked at it and absolutely wrote that one off as Ebbsfleet getting beat, so it was a bonus for us.
AA: All gamblers look at the Conference and say ‘I wouldn’t touch that’, because there are so many results you wouldn’t expect. Why do you think that is in this league more so than any other?
DB: It’s so unpredictable for the reason we just touched on – the gap between everybody else and the top six is so small. Anybody can beat anybody. We played Wrexham and drew 2-2, we played Newport when they were on a roll and drew 2-2.
AA: Obviously it’s not a betting league, it’s a football league, but punters will look at it and say ‘That’s got to happen because Kidderminster have won ten on the trot, Gateshead are losing games and they’re not even playing on their own ground’. Why is it that when it reaches that pinnacle of saying ‘Well, this is a definite result’, it goes against the odds?
KW: It’s like the FA Cup, isn’t it? Teams as small as us going to places like Wrexham…there is an expectation on teams like Luton, Wrexham, Grimsby. They are expected to be at the sharp end and expected to roll us over. We look at that and try to embrace the situation and say, ‘Right we are the underdogs here, we know we’re the underdogs here’ – and we all know it and do it – ‘the more we can frustrate them, and get to 20-25 minutes with no goals, the crowd might turn’. That is the pressure that Steve and those guys at the top end have to deal with.
SB: In some ways though, when we go to the Wrexhams, the Grimsbys and the Lutons, we feel like that.
LW: For me, it’s the goalscorers who make the difference. Two games against Kiddy last year Anthony Malbon pops up when the game is dead and scores to equalise one and win the other. Loads of teams are very, very similar, but it’s the top end of the pitch where games are decided.
SB: You’re right, the difference between the teams is maybe just that little bit extra. The teams, like Forest Green, are spending a lot of money – or seem to be – and by rights they should be up there, shouldn’t they? It’s not always down to the money, but what they’ll be able to do is go and get the forwards and shift them about if they are not scoring.
DB: We had Adam Cunnington and Kev had Andy Brown, and in effect, you’re pandering around them a little bit and wrapping them in cotton wool because you know that they’re going to get the goals you need to stay in the league.
LW: But for the likes of us down the bottom, Dale, we’d have had one of those types of player, but Kiddy had a few and the top teams have several players capable of scoring.
DB:You’re right, and I had to keep Adam on the pitch at all times.
SB: We were in a good position because when we sold Jamille Matt to Fleetwood, for the first time I was able to go and bring one or two in, like Michael Gash. We hadn’t been able to do that in that January period before.
DB: We ended up playing against Michael Gash four times last year – when he was on loan at Braintree, the two games when he went back to Cambridge and then against Kiddy – and he scored in every game so I’m sick to death of him! I couldn’t understand, though, why at one stage he’s loaned out to Braintree, goes back to Cambridge and can’t get in for a while, but then starts scoring and gets a move to Kiddy and proves a massive player.
SB: That’s where you’re thinking ‘I’m taking a chance here because he’s had a few clubs for a young lad’. Now I’ve got to make sure that he sticks with us and starts banging them in on a regular basis.
WE AGREE LEE CAN BE A HUGE HIT AT KIDDY
NLP: Who has been the pick of the summer signings?
LW: Lee Fowler going to Kidderminster. Ability-wise he’s as good as anyone. We saw him at Wrexham when he was doing great, then he moved to Fleetwood and won the title. If he’s going into a settled environment, he could be the pick of the signings.
AA: He’s got the best win-percentage of any player over the last three years in the Conference.
SB: (laughing) You need to get out more Alan! I’m looking forward to working with Lee. He got in touch with me during the summer, and like with a lot of them you think, ‘How am I going to afford him?’ But his ability is unquestionable. What we’ve got to do is drive him on to get him to those levels on a regular basis. He comes across with a desire to want to do well and Lee Fowler, at his best, will improve us.
KW: For me Fowler at Kiddy and Andy Mangan at Forest Green are the two. From a collective point of view, Cambridge seem to have swept up everything out there. There are wholesale changes and it’ll be interesting to see it pan out.
SB: I think Dale has signed somebody who potentially has the potential to lift Tamworth that extra level, and that’s Justin Richards. He’s another one who’s always scored goals.
LW: Shaun Whalley as well. He’s gone to the right sort of manager in John Still and Luton are getting him at the right time of his career, where he’s had a wild streak – funny without being a real bad lad – and he actually cares. He’s moved down there with his girl and the shape he keeps himself in now is phenomenal. You felt sorry for him at times at Southport because everyone knew our threat was coming from him and he just got double-marked. But you put him there with an array of better players, and I can see him really being one of the best in the league this year.
SB: Another one we’ve taken is James Dance, and he’s another one who’s got to get going again because for whatever reason, whether it’s down to injuries or not, he’s slowly going down a little bit. But potentially he can do it.
DB: A few years ago I took James to Atherstone from Sunday league football. He’s massively developed and last year, we tried to bring him back to Tamworth. He’s a great kid.
SB: I always thought that he had better ability than Matty Blair. Blairy left us and went on to win promotion with York, now he’s joined Fleetwood. But Dancer seemed to just have a bit more nous about him as a player.
DB: The one for me, as we touched on earlier, is Mangan – because if he can click, he can score goals for Forest Green and that’s what they’ve lacked.
LW: With James Norwood and Mangan alongside Danny Wright, they’ll be a real handful.
ROCK STAR, PILOT, WRESTLER… OUR KYLE IS A JACK OF ALL TRADES
NLP: Does anyone in your squad have a hidden talent that the Non-League world should know about?
SB: I signed Tom Shaw from Rushden and he was pretty handy with the guitar. He’d take it on the coach and get it out on the way back for a sing-song, but I must admit, Dale and I were at the Lichfield Rock Festival on Saturday night to see Stubblemelt, Tom Marshall and Kyle Perry’s band, and they were good.
DB:Take out the family connection, because Kyle is my cousin, and it’s a difficult one because he’s been a wrestler, a pilot, a pop star, a footballer. I had him on loan from Kev and sat him down at the end of the season and said, ‘Soon you’ve got to make a decision about what you want to do – you’ve got to go one way or another’. Now he’s gone to Altrincham!
NLP: He’s been a wrestler?!
DB: Kyle’s been in the ring with people who are now in the WWE in America. He came out of Walsall and got into the wrestling while he was playing semi-pro football, then decided he’d take his pilot’s licence, then he’d become a pop star, then get back into football!
SB: He’s always been a real handful when he’s played against us.
DB: He is, and he’s a smashing kid, he’s got a good heart, but I just feel that all the other things have distracted him – although the band is becoming quite serious now and they’re doing really well.
KW: He’s a web designer as well, isn’t he? He works at the club still doing our website.
SB: He’s never going to be stuck for a job then!
LW: We’ve got Sean Clancy, right, who thinks he’s a model. He keeps appearing in Desperate Scousewives anyway.
KW:Gavin Cowan’s a good moonwalker – he’s like Michael Jackson. That’s all he’s got in his locker though!
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