ALEX LAWLESS got man-of-the-match in the 3-0 win over Dartford and that was as predictable as it was deserved; Luton’s fit-again midfield talisman scoring on his first start of the season.
But a potential Hatters hero emerged for me, however, on his second Kenilworth Road start – but first in a Luton shirt – and he too was afforded a terrific ovation as he left the field late on.
Step forward Jim Stevenson.
Luton fans with distant memories will recall a tall, gangly blond midfielder making his full senior debut against them for Histon in 2010.
His side were in the receiving end of a 5-1 beating, but I gave Stevenson a rating of seven out of ten. He’d done well in difficult circumstances and had gained a fan.
Midway through last season, I watched Histon as they beat Altrincham at home. So did Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson, though he was scouting Alty forward Duncan Watmore, now at Sunderland.
Another gaffer was there, standing away from everyone else, behind the goal with his baseball cap pulled down.
“I saw you at that Histon-Altrincham game,” new Luton boss John Still said to me soon after. “Which players would you take out of the Histon side?”
I replied that Zak Mills and Lewis Taafe had impressed, while Danny Fitzsimons and Stevenson get better every time I see them. Still uttered the latter pair’s names almost in synch with me, and not long after they arrived at Kenilworth Road.
While Fitzsimons waits for his first Kenilworth Road start, Stevenson – after a substitute’s debut against Grimsby – was up and down, intercepting, breaking up play and recycling the ball as Luton scored from open play for the first time in a month.
One-hundred-and-nine starts on from being given a chance courtesy of the Stutes’ financial plight, a 21-year-old with valuable experience looks every inch the part.
CARL IS LIVING IN THE FAST LANE
ONE result in the Skrill North stood out for me in midweek, and it was the boomerang man of Non-League management – Carl Macauley – who was behind it.
The Vauxhall Motors boss was linked with the job at Stockport County recently, and it’s no surprise; the former Southport and Morecambe midfielder continues to keep the Motormen driving along nicely at Step 2, despite a budget chairman Alan Bartlam says “has to be the lowest” in the division.
Macauley – who was appointed Owen Brown’s successor almost eight years ago, but has twice left Rivacre Road in that time only to return within a few months – reckons the win over the ailing Hatters was his side’s highlight of the campaign so far.
Challenge
It’s a view he says was shared by County’s caretaker boss, Alan Lord. “We’ve always had a decent starting eleven, but this year we’ve got a squad of 16-17 good players,” said 42-year-old Macauley.
“I felt we got a deserved result the other night. Alan Lord’s a really good fella and he came up to me at the end and said ‘By God, you’re the best footballing side we’ve faced this season’.
“We repeated that to our boys to let them know what other people think, but told them they’ve got to play to our strengths to maintain it.”
Most people associate the Ellesmere Port club with the famous FA Cup first round win over Queens Park Rangers 11 years ago, the season after Alvin McDonald led them to within one place of promotion to the Conference as Northern Premier runners-up behind Burton Albion.
Their highest placing in Conference North since restructuring, however, is the 11th position they managed in 2008-09. That’s the spot Vauxhall sat in ahead of yesterday’s game against Oxford City, and Bartlam is hopeful Macauley can steer them to their best finish this term.
“Carl does a fantastic job for us,” said the chairman. “I’m sure he’s got ambition to progress, but we love him and he loves us. We have a great relationship. It would have to be something a little bit special to get his head turned.
“We thought we were going to achieve our best finish last season, but we tailed off a bit towards the end and finished 12th. The challenge for Carl and the guys now is to see if we can better that and create club history.”
With his day job coaching in the Liverpool Football Club Foundation College, Macauley has developed an Anfield link with Vauxhall to help try to produce boys like captain Tom Hannigan, who’s been with the club since he was 12.
“That’s what we’re about,” adds Macauley. “We can only keep trying to produce players. We know we can’t keep hold of them for long for the simple reason that other clubs can offer double the money we can. But we’ll keep trying to get on and coach the boys as best we can.”
It was Henry Ford who invented the assembly line. With products like Ipswich’s Paul Taylor and FC Halifax and England C man Josh Wilson having motored off theirs, Macauley and Vauxhall aren’t proving a bad imitation.
SKY HIGH INTO FREEFALL, WHAT A BIZARRE TWIST!
SPARE match balls, definitely. A herd of cows, bizarrely, too. But never before have I heard of a parachutist being on a football pitch when they shouldn’t be.
Neither had the people involved at Salisbury City’s game with Chester last week, judging by the video on the internet of the guy floating onto the Ray Mac surface.
The farm animals that held up one of my games for lkeston Town’s youth team in the mid-1990s was easily explained by the fact we played on an open field opposite the New Manor Ground, rather than the enclosed first-team pitch itself.
But this is the Skrill Premier, where the home side City – on their way to a fourth victory in five games – were supposed to be the only thing flying in Wiltshire that day.
Chester boss Neil Young, heading to a sixth defeat in eight, was most certainly grounded. And he wanted others to be, too.
“In all my time involved in football I have never, ever seen anything like it,” said Young. “There were another four or five circling the ground and I was hoping someone would send a flare up there to get more down and have the game abandoned!”
Talk about the highs and lows of football – and parachuting for that matter!
