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Let’s pause, before I look at the table or my stats or anything else. Why do I believe we just got out that fast?
What happened? Great question!
Poole Town FC, as a reminder, had just recently risen up the football ranks. About ten years ago, it was around 9th in the pyramid, and that’s around where it was historically. New management and a new coach with a desire to push themselves up the table took over, and then won the Wessex league at level 9 three times (playoffs) before they finally got out. They were consistenly moving forward. Then in 2013, they won their Southern League Devision 1 at level 8, and made it out. This put them in the Southern League Permier at level 7. They missed playoffs by one point in their first year, and then got out in the 15-16 season. In 2016 they began playing in the Conference South, and then winning it under us just a few years later. So this is a team who started pushing quickly up the charts.
Here are some numbers that I suspect help with perspective making:
• 4. We initially added 4 new starters of talent during the summer. DC Corbridge was a much better player at DC, GK Stedman, while not great, was a big upgrade, DR Kebbie was a strong upgrade and aruably our best player in that first round, AMR Elliot was a strong starting addion that joined players like Devlin, Moore, and Roberts.
• 3. We added three very, very strong players at each level in January that were very good for this level. Ashby, Browne, and Davey were all strong additions that helped carve out 1st place for us.
• 4. By the time our new players arrived, we had just four starters left from last year’s about relegation-campaign, all of whom were big upgrades – and only Moore, Devlin, Roberts, and Spetch were left at DL, AML, MC, and ST.
• 13. Our tactics were designed to beat 13 of the teams in our league. We were a wash against four others where we had the same tactic. That means that only 5 games were ones where we didn’t have a tactical advantage
• 3. We got lucky in the first Torquay match when they had three players kicked off the pitch. Beating one of the best teams on the road on opening day was something that was really needed. For example, in real life, we began with a 0-4 drubbing against Torquay. Despite the low score of 2-1, that win ame us early momentum and confident going into matches agiant teams that were not expected to do well with a bigger talent loss.
• 0. We had zero long term injuries. All of our injury reports were telling us about how lucky we had been by avoiding major injury. Browne was out for a few weeks, and a few players here and there for a game or two. Nothing major – 0.
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