Talk the talk, now walk the walk
Over the last couple of days I posted Jim Kavanagh’s reaction to the Tony Kleanthous interview brought to us by the excellent Beespod guys. Having been a guest with Mem and Iain, I’m really pleased they managed to secure the interview with much help from the excellent Adam Rowe, have a lot of time for these three chaps.
I’m not going to make this a long one, Jim’s covered a fair bit in his opinion but there are some bits I heard that I wasn’t in agreement with. However, it was right to get this interview, Tony needed to do it to at least help people to understand as far as he could on some matters so if you were expecting hard hitting questions then you’ve missed the point.
They will come in time; this is about building bridges and a lot of them in fact. That’s not going to happen overnight and for some the boat has already sailed from that broken bridge and won’t be coming back.
To me it was the other side of the story to hear and for others too, most of you know I speak to a lot of people who were connected with the club. I’m not naïve to say they don’t speak to anyone else or any other fans, of course they do so some now have heard both sides of the story.
Part 2 I certainly felt more critical of, possibly because it’s very current and because more of the conversations I’ve heard the other side of the story.
But let’s start on a point that really astounded me, the National League not starting. As a board member of course I expected TK to have inside knowledge, call it one of the perks. As a collective board to think the season was never going to start I was gobsmacked! It’s as close to a 5th division of the professional game as it gets and it was always going to start. If that’s the case it looked like we were the only ones not planning for a re-start then, awful leadership from a board that needs to be replaced this summer.
Peter Beadle unlucky? Not a chance! From that point above he was always behind the game from day one, a man plucked from backwaters and with no or extremely little knowledge of players at our level and a smaller pool to pick from based on our reasoning above. Surely TK saw the quality was poor in what we were signing? If he didn’t and professes to have a poor memory of people, then this Director of Football is much needed or mistakes will repeat themselves.
The dispensation for the goalkeeper loan, laughable in respect of two things. One, we had six players on loan under Tim Flowers so one had to be left out of the squad, matchday rules of five, always has been. Same happened under Martin Allen one year so it’s not new. Why then did TK think the rules would be bent to accommodate us where we have the loan signings to help out after poor recruitment in the summer?
Secondly, that brings us on nicely to the furloughing of players! I’m not going to spend too long on this as I think I’ve thrashed it to death over Scott Loach. If he wanted to avoid the above, then Loach should have been recalled, forget the cash side of it.
Six players left under contract is the same amount as Beadle started with so let’s hope we get it right this time. As far as I am aware Ben Richards-Everton and Liam Daly are two of the six, the four could be options but we’ll be aware on 31st May no doubt.
Paul McCallum saved our season. Not convinced he saved it, Paul McCallum added the missing ingredient yes, but one player we needed back in June when he was top of the list for Darren to come in but money wasn’t spent then. To say Hendo saved the season by getting the deal over the line was a bit over the top in my opinion, as an agent he got a top drawer deal for Macca out of Solihull and he did give us that extra spark, leading me onto the next point though.
Woking away, that wet Tuesday night in Surrey and probably the complete performance of the season. One defeat in 17 games, games in hand, everything firing, but that’s not a play-off team? Tell me then, what did that team need to do? Because that was one hell of a run with a group of players in which Darren signed just four of them, one of which was out with a broken ankle. They were that close they still have their WhatsApp group going despite being at different clubs, I’m pretty sure that isn’t a common occurrence everywhere?
My last point is on DC and the level of crowds. I am as guilty as anyone picking and choosing my games, I have a 5 hour round trip to The Hive and back and most of the times I went was seeing friends I’ve made over the years. Sometimes it’s lovely driving up on your own and even sitting watching the games alone something I’ve done lots of times, other occasions you want the company. I follow a lot of non-league football, have so much on my doorstep and at times it’s been very unappealing to watch this football club, not just the performance on the pitch but the way things are done off the pitch for us the supporters.
The bigger picture needed to be looked at here. Yes crowds were still low when DC got the team playing but why? It took a while to get that team going I know, but the crowd syndrome goes beyond last season.
To me off the pitch we do things half-cocked and then wonder why people jump up and down at it. We put together a wonderful season ticket offer for this season, applause for that. But we buried it in an article announcing Darren and Junior were leaving, that’s not common sense.
Similar was done this season with the statement put out, Simon Bassey and Dave Anderson’s arrival almost a footnote when we should be putting these great things in a post where it can be digested better.
This is now the breakthrough moment where things have to get better and improve. I called a long time ago this season for Tony to have a strategy, a process, and to follow it, now we have it, the talk has been talked, time to walk the walk…….