23s v Alton
Spending a touching-on frosty Monday night on the back pitch probably isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time. It’s not really mine either, generally. There’s little to recommend, on the face of it, a couple of hours navigating the moss on the floor and the brambles on your back. It’d be a reasonably hard sell, even to die-hard Bog Enders, to come watch a team of lads you don’t recognise in a competition you don’t follow.
However, after Monday night, I’ll be going again.
Poddington and I took our usual pint of stout in the bar and said hello to several familiar faces. It could be that the 23s, now playing in a reserve league, have something of a cult following. Old guys with cold ears, mainly. I count myself in that number and, double-hooded, wandered to the back pitch moments before we thought the match would probably start. No-one had checked.
Kieran Campbell is vocal in a group of lads warming up. Our 23s look younger than the Alton side also going through their paces. Joel Drew is starting, who orbits the first team. Some other names that I have to divine from shouts on the pitch are recognisable to me, a few with appearances for the first team.
The system I sort of recognise from the first team from the last couple of years- something like a 3-4-3- and immediately lads stand out. On the near side to me, a young man wearing 16 scripts from the off from one of the central defensive positions. For the whole of the first 45 Poddington and I watch and listen to the lad, who looks to be at least a couple of years younger than the majority of his opposition, and younger again than a few others. He has composure that belies his youth and assumes authority from the off. It’s great to see.
Chatting with Warren Andrews at HT, we discover that the young man was a regular in the U18s Sunday squad after coming through the youth section at the club. 16 years old.
There’s been a lot of chat in the stands and from supporters online about young players at Tooting. A lot of negative narrative around the pathways from the youth setup to the first team. The argument that the first team’s needs were usurped by the club’s desire to be seen as a “Club of Progression”was overstated, to my eyes. Certainly the Tooting sides that struggled so much in the past 18 months were not replete with young men plucked straight from the youth ranks and those that did play played on merit. Let’s have it right as well- it wasn’t on the performances of home-grown young players that we went down.
I won’t talk further about previous years in the first team, but I will say that the club’s record of producing talent should be a source of pride. Hopefully the u23s new position in a reserves league will benefit both fringe players in the first team and younger lads trying to get into the men’s game.
The game vs Alton was a properly exciting, competitive fixture. The opposition was made up of lads who looked like they didn’t want to be playing reserve football, in a good way. They took the game seriously, tackles were flying in, the ref was getting given up the banks, the stakes were real. And in that environment, Tooting’s young charges thrived. Joel Drew looks like he’ll be comfortable as and when he filters more regularly into the first team. Several attacking players look like potential options too.
To segue into a Vibe Check, it was indicative of the vibes that the game was well attended, relatively speaking. Also, it was affirming to me- and I’m sure to the players too- that Jamie Byatt was present. The pathway from the club’s youth ranks to the first team has not been severed in the changes at the club, it would appear. It could even be that as first team players appear for the u23/reserve side to regain fitness or form, under Jamie’s watch, players who make up the core of that side may catch the eye. I’m sure Ash and Dan keep the first team manager well abreast of who’s doing what in the younger ranks. We may develop more of our own for the first team yet.
The game was won by single goal and a clean sheet. The game was won by managing a lead when under pressure, not giving away bad fouls. It was won with some good saves and some luck. In short, the three points were secured by a complete performance that Dan Yankah and his team can be very pleased with.
As the small support filed out, we sounded our appreciation and the players responded with theirs. As Warren said in his piece recently, appreciation of the people that help make up the club is something the coaching staff use in their motivation of this side. Some mutual appreciation is very affirming and really begins to cement a culture that Jamie is trying to engender- one club.
Jamie clearly has the buy-in on that from his own family, as Mrs Byatt seems to have added further to her role on a matchday, providing the food to both sides after the game. Their son was also involved on the day, fetching balls from the mangroves around the back pitch. It’s wonderful to see.
On the night, it was wonderful to feel a part of it. Dan was appreciative in the bar, happy for the support for the team and, by extension, he and his coaching team.
Bog End Ant’s podcast speaks warmly of the vibes around the club. He and Harry are spot-on. It’s a results business, football. But a football club isn’t a just business, is it. It’s a club. A community. A bunch of folk working together for a common goal. The more we see that beyond just the first team on a Saturday, the more we’ll get out of it. I’ve never doubted that, and hanging around the back pitch on Monday with staff and volunteers and young men on a journey in football crystallised it.
Aye. Get down your football club innit.
Up the Stripes.
