Student in the game

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As the train approached the station I slid my book into my bag and reflected that it probably wasn't a good thing that I could still name all the stop on this journey even though I hadn't traveled the line regularly for five years or so. I slung my bag over my shoulder and went through my usual ritual of patting all of my pockets to make sure my phone, wallet, keys and iPod were still there and hadn't fallen out. It was a silly ritual, especially as A.F.I. filling my head was proof that the iPod was still there, but I didn't want anything to go wrong today and this was something I'd done for as long as I could remember.

The train finally ground to a halt and was greeted with the robotic feminine voice declaring 'Hatfield, this is Hatfield'. I stepped out of the doors and took in my surroundings. This was the first time I'd stood on this platform since February 2007 and in a comforting, but depressing way, nothing had changed. In front of me was the small building that served as toilets, ticket office, waiting room and snack bar. Behind me was the second platform, double track and shrubbery shielding the nearby houses from the line. I headed through the ticket office and out into the car park, again nothing had changed. The number 600 Uno bus pulled up to the bus stop and I hopped on.

The bus arrived at the the De Havilland campus and I thanked the driver as got off and then I stopped. This was getting to be a bit surreal. After spending three years at university in Hatfield coming back to the town was strange, especially as so little had changed. I wandered through the campus, making a slight detour to find my old halls and see if I could spot who was living in my old room, before heading off the the LRC and the conference rooms within where I would be meeting the chairman of Hatfield Town FC.

Football management had always been something I'd wanted to get into, right from a young age and whilst studying at university I'd taken a few courses in football management and coaching that the Hertfordshire FA had been running. It'd gone reasonably well. but I'd never followed through on it due to my degree course taking precedent and then coming back home and focusing on getting my driving license and a job. Unfortunately I'd just been made redundant, but as luck would have it Hatfield were looking for a new manager, just for a laugh I applied and was amazed when I was offered an interview, and now here I was about to go into meet the chairman and possibly take my first steps into football management.
 
So, three weeks had passed since my interview and I'd heard nothing. It'd gone reasonably well, but I assumed that there was someone more qualified and with more managerial experience who'd gone for the job as well and that they'd been chosen. I could understand why, even at the amateur/semi-professional level clubs will still be looking to employ the best possible person to deliver the success to the club that they want. I'd been checking back on the clubs website and there was no announcement of a new manager yet, so I still held a little hope, but I was pretty certain if it was going to be me they picked I would've found out by now. With this in my I decided to spend the morning tending to my bonsai trees before looking through the job pages to see if I could find some form of work.

That afternoon I received a phone call. I was expecting it to be from the local supermarket. I'd been for an interview for a part time checkout job and they'd said they'd ring back roughly at this time. I was pretty suprised to here it was the chairman's PA inviting me back to the club for further talks and discussions and possibly confirming a contract. To begin with I was convinced it was a wind up, but the more she spoke, the more I realised it was real. I let them know I'd be there and we arranged a time.

The following day was a complete blur. I travelled to Welwyn Garden City, where the club currently plays its home games, had a very productive meeting with the chairman and walked out the new manager of Hatfield Town FC. I had no idea how this had all happened but in the space of 24 hours I'd gone from being unemployed with the prospect of being a check out boy to managing a football club. The club sorted out some accommodation for me in Hatfield itself, mainly because I knew the area and I was more than happy to make the 20 minute commute between Hatfield and Welwyn. They'd given me a reasonably modest contract of £100 a week which meant I'd still need to find a part time job and an ambitious but achievable set of goals to work towards. My challenge was to try and take the club from level nine in the footballing pyramid up to level seven as this would bring the club on a par with its biggest local rivals, St. Albans City.

Al that was left was for me to meet the squad and approve the pre-season schedule.
 
My first week in charge was an eventful one to say the least.

Having settled back into the town that I'd spent four years of my life in I remember why I loved, and hated, the place, but luckily I felt at home.

I travelled to Welwyn Garden City on my second day back in Hatfield and arrived at the Gosling Sports, the home to The Hats, around ten-ish for my inaugural press conference as the manager of Hatfield Town. It went pretty much as expected. I was questioned about transfer policy, tactics, handling of players the usual sort of thing the press wants to know. Weirdly I was asked about rumours that I was after a player already, I laughed that one off reminding the three journalists in attendance that I'd only been in the job for two days and hadn't even met the squad yet.

My next port of call was to meet with Les Allen-Williams, the chairman, to confirm the pre-season schedule that had been put in place as a default option in case no manager could be found. I wasn't too impressed to be honest, especially with the run of three games in six days. A fully professional outfit with a big squad could cope with that but not a semi-pro team. We scrapped the plans in place and drew up a more realistic looking schedule which consisted of four home games against South Normamton, Thurnbury, London Colney and Bodmin and an away game against Corinthian. To be honest I wold have like to have just the four home games, but I needed to see the set up for away games.

Over the next couple of days I finally met my squad. The lads were pretty hyped up to meet me and eager to get going. I was impressed by the balance in the squad, especially as there appeared to be competition for places across the squad. My biggest concern though, was that in a squad of 36, which is a decent size for a semi pro team, 18 were just 16 or 17 years old and only one guy was over 25 years old, so very little experience. Unfortunately the age of my squad was the least of my worries as at the end of my first training session I suffered a massive blow. Amos Ugwunwa, a young lad who could play in either full back position went up for a header and after a clash of heads landed heavily and didn't move. He was checked over and taken to the local A&E where we were informed he had sustained a fractured skull. I was gutted for the lad, especially when he was told he'd be out for at least four months. I relayed the news to the team the following day, but assured them he was stable and that we should go out and do are best in his name.
 
Pre-season when as well as could be expected both on and off the pitch.

On the pitch we came away with a 1-1 draw against South Normanton, beat Corinthian 1-0, lost 0-3 to Thornbury, beat London Colney 3-2 and drew 0-0 with Bodmin. The Bodmin game was a massive disappointment. The whole idea of playing a team smaller than us was to give us a confidence boost before the season started, but unfortunately the result had the reverse affect. Despite the hiding from Thornbury, I wasn't angry with the players. The result was mainly down to some atrocious refereeing. Two penalties, one of which was outside the area, the other given for a handball that never was. Add to that both penalties came after a very controversial red card. Even the Thornbury manager acknowledged how bad the officiating was.

Off the field things were going a lot more smoothly. I'd taken a good look at the squad and released three players who quite frankly were just a drain on the wage budget. Two of them accepted the decision, one made things difficult, but I'm here to run a football club, not to play nice and let guys play who aren't up to it. The fourth player to leave was sold on. He was on my list of possible releases so I saw no point in hanging on to him. The four out freed up valuable space and money for the three in coming players. John Borg and Matt Scott both joined to add weight to the midfield, while David Eaton added some cutting edge up front. Unfortunately Matt Scott picked up an injury 30 minutes into his debut in the friendly against London Colney, that would put him out of action for at least three months.

This meant that the next time Hatfield would be playing I would be making my managerial league debut. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I spent friday evening sitting in my rented house watching DVD's and eating ice cream. I knew I needed to get an early night, but I wasn't able to sleep. Come 1am I was still pacing round the living room with some rubbish playing silently on the television. To many, this was just a football match between two local teams who no-one bar a hundred or so people would take an interest in.

To me it was the first step on a long road to taking a semi-professional football team to the conference and possibly beyond.
 
August 2011

My first month in charge went by a like a flash. Despite my nerves and despite some less than favourable comments from opposition managers my first four games could be considered a reasonable success. I discovered to my slight annoyance that my chairman and the rest of the board had been a little optimistic with their targets for the season and the long term future of the club. It turned out that despite their prediction that we could be pushing for the three promotions we needed to get on level terms with St. Albans within four or five seasons, we were nowhere near that level. The lads I have are good honest players, but we were generally tipped to be propping up the league. Still, I was heading into the month with the sort of enthusiasm anyone starting a new job has.

Holmer Green were my first ever opponents and we didn't disgrace ourselves. We came away with a 1-1 draw which to me was a point gained after going 1-0 down after just five minutes and being battered for most of the game. Berkhamstead, one of the league favourites were next up and to say we were unlucky doesn't describe it. We went 1-0 shortly after half time having more than matched our opponents for 45 minutes. Five minutes later we were 2-0, or so we thought. The linesman gave offside and at this level there are no replays, so we'll never know. Then in the last ten minutes Berkhamstead equalised with a 30 yard rasper and then took the lead in highly controversial circumstances. We were told there would be two minutes injury time and it was in these minutes Berkhamstead scored the winner. This was a big enough blow, but the goal came in the 94th minute, two minutes after the game should have ended and was scored while one of my players was laying injured in the centre circle thanks to an elbow from the eventual goal scorer. I'm ashamed to admit I lost my temper in the following press conference.

The next game took me from elation to devestation. We travelled to Hamwell and after five minutes found ourselves 1-0 down, but the response was incredible. A goal 30 seconds after half time pulled us level and then two goals in five minutes, both from set pieces sent us 3-1 ahead. With half an hour to go this was my best day so far in my brief managerial career but it turned sour quickly. The Hamwell players, realising they were being well beaten, decided to take it out on my players. My captain Long, left back Cetiner and right winger Armstrong were all carried off with injuries thanks to heavy tackles. The Hamwell manager then had the nerve to declare we were lucky to win the game! The final match of the month was against table topping Dunstable. Again it was another bitter blow. Missing three first choice players thanks to the Hamwell team, we held on for 89 minutes before we conceed and slipped to a 1-0 defeat.

Four points from four games was a fair return in my eyes and it was a view shared by the board. They were more than pleased with my start, but made it clear that I would need to maintain the current performance at the very least and sort out the slow starts to games and lack of concentration at the end. All five of our goals conceeded had been scored in either the first or last five minutes of the game. Needless to say it was top of my list to discuss with my coaches and the squad.

I was looking forward to September, unfortunately, it didn't go as planned.
 
looks good mate, I assume this is gonna be long term as you are in tier 9!
 
After seeing the lads play and train for a month I was quietly confident that we could push for a nice comfortable mid-table finish. They're still a young bunch but I'd seen enough to know they were capable of succeeding at this level.

How very wrong I was.

After a decent start we lost the first two games in September without putting up much of a fight. Hillingdon beat us 2-0 followed by a 3-1 defeat to Harefield, in which we didn't even score our one goal. I was called into the chairman's office on Monday morning and asked to hold a meeting with the team to try an ascertain why we'd lost three on the bounce and more worryingly why we'd put up hardly any fight in the process. The meeting actually went OK. There was constructive input from players and coaching staff alike and with the exception of one or two individuals, everyone went away happy.

It showed on the pitch as well as we beat Colney Heath 3-1 and then hammered Broxbourne 3-0 to end September on a high.

All the good work at the end of the month was lost in October though. Inconsistencies started to creep in from the first game of the month as we scraped a 1-1 draw in the last minute with bottom of the table Oxhey Jets. Aylesbury then beat us 2-1, the score line flattered us immensly as we should have lost by a lot more.

It was after this game I decided things needed changing. I looked at a whole host of suggestions from the coaching staff as well as analysing all our games and decided the personnel were OK and it was the formation that was wrong. Out went the 4-4-2 and in came a more conservative 4-2-1-2-1.

It worked.

The next game saw us come from 2-0 down against Royston to salvage a 2-2 draw, this was followed by a 2-1 victory over Biggleswade and a very unlucky defeat against Hertford. Having gone 1-0 down, we fought back to be 2-1 up but ended up losing 3-2 thanks to a contraversial penalty and an offside goal. Still the signs were there that the formation change was the right thing to do and we finished the month in 15th.

The start of November bought a very below par 0-0 draw with Hadley and fears that the old inconsistencies were creeping back in. I'm pleased to say I was proven wrong. The day after the Hadley game the whole squad received a boost. Two more players were released having not played a game for the club and Steve Claridge was brought in as a player/coach. His arrival saw an upturn in fortunes that saw a 4-0 win over AFC Dunstable, a 5-1 demolition of St Margaretsbury and a 1-0 win over Leverstock Green that saw us finish the month in 10th.
 
Graduating in a few months :) will follow your story......I personally think FM is the only way to deal with living in Hatfield lol!
 
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