Quote:
Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA
Welcome to the ol' place, seems like a good way to get your feet wet here afaic.
Have at it.
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Thanks, Jon! It's been fun so far.
2 July 2017
July was a slow month in the admission office at Abingdon. A few students and their families might request a tour of the grounds, if they were still considering whether or not to submit an application for the upcoming term. Otherwise, Tom was fairly free to spend as much time as he liked on his new avocation.
Sutton Courtenay's grounds were called Drayton Road, after the thoroughfare on which they were located. There were seats for about 50 spectators, and Tom figured the place might hold 1000 or so, if all the terraces were full. The fact of the matter was that the club would be lucky to draw one-tenth that many fans.
The club trained at another pitch, called The Folly for reasons unbeknownst to anyone Tom spoke to. That was where the youth teams would play their matches, too.
The club's offices were located in a small brick building at Drayton Road. The staff there numbered two. An energetic young lad of 19 called
Samuel Rice, whose official title was "Personal Assistant to the Manager," was available for everything from washing the kit to mowing the grass.
The club's receptionist and "Press Officer" was
Eleanor Cooper. A willowy brunette, Eleanor wouldn't make a bad first impression on anyone who came to the office, and she seemed to be as smart as she was pretty. That was saying something.
As soon as Tom walked through the door that morning, Sam Rice handed him a list of forty-some players who would be attending the team's first tryout.
"A couple of these lads can play a bit," Sam observed. He pointed to the name of
Peter Green. "He's a fair center half."
Tom nodded. "Make sure to point him out to me."
"You can't miss him." Sam grinned.
The other players Sam knew about were goalkeeper
Dan Griffith and left winger
Tony Jackson. A striker,
Peter Noble, also seemed familiar, but Sam wasn't sure if Noble was indeed the player he remembered.
The tryout got underway at 10 A.M. About thirty-five players showed up; Tom,
Don Hancock, and
Kevin Davies ran the rule over them as they moved through a variety of drills.
Tom had what some might consider a somewhat unique approach to lower league football. It seemed to him that most managers at this level valued pace above all else. The lower league matches he'd watched featured fast players whose first touch could be abominable, whose technique was often clumsy, whose concentration was fleeting, and whose decision making bordered on the absurd. Tom decided to look for a different sort of player--one who might not be as quick or as physical, but who could play the game with some finesse. He reckoned Sutton Courtenay's style would be unfamiliar to his opponents, and might provide them with an advantage, particularly against a manager who wasn't tactically flexible enough to make a shrewd counter-move.
Sam was right. Tom picked out
Peter Green immediately. Green was huge, standing 6'7" with the build of an American gridiron player. He could also move quite well for a big lad and was surprisingly nimble with the ball at his feet. Immediately, Tom penciled Green in as one of his first team center backs.
Dan Griffith looked like a decent 'keeper, and
Tony Jackson showed some quality on the left flank. And
Peter Noble was, indeed, the player Sam remembered. "Noble doesn't immediately impress you," Tom remarked to Hancock. "Then you take a closer look and you realize he's more than you thought." Sam remembered Noble having a knack for finding the net, even as a boy of 17 playing with grown men in a Sunday league. Now 20, Noble was no longer a boy, and he still had that wicked right foot.
Tom and his coaches compared their notes, and selected 16 players to comprise the inaugural first team squad for Sutton Courtenay FC. They were young--only goalkeeper
Les Cole and defender
Harvey Tolfrey were in their thirties. Another player, a 35-year-old midfielder called
James Mitchell, decided halfway through his tryout that it was time to hang up his boots. Mitchell then offered his services to the team as a volunteer coach.
Tom looked at the other coaches and shrugged. "Help us evaluate these players," he suggested. Mitchell seemed to know a decent footballer from a poor one, so Tom accepted his offer and added him to the staff. Only then did the shaggy-mopped Mitchell reveal he held a Continental B license, giving him the best credentials among them, by a wide margin.
And that was how Sutton Courtenay FC became a team in fact, as well as in theory.