If you look at that Tony Sanders managed team from his arrival to us reaching the pinnacle, the evolution was not dissimilar to what we are seeing today.
You had mainstays like Ivan Crossley and Mickey Brooke becoming squad players - but still playing an important role (Brookes goal at Droylsden taking us to White Hart Lane for example); you had a raising of the bar seeing upgrades from (eg) Mickey Moore to John Rogers, and a falling by the wayside of the (eg) Joe Flaherty's of this world. You even saw the odd big name signing coming in and failing to make an impact (Tony Webber as example)
And the main thrust was strengthen the squad each year - Johnson and Webber in 76/7; Rogers, Bailey and King in 77/8; Barry Howard in 78/9; Graham Barrow and Barry Whitbread in 79/80. And we ended up with a squad that had replaced (eg) Alan Heathcote with Graham Barrow
The arrival of Ceesay, Mooney, Senior, Colclough, Kosylo and Smith (the new Graham Barrow) is part of the same dynamic.
Coincidentally, the board is expanding to a similar size as it was in the late 70's - ambitious young dynamic business leaders (and me!)
The root cause of the demise from 80/1 onwards was that we felt we had to give the team that missed out on FL another go, and their momentum carried them to a second title. Unfortunately they all reached the end of their career at the same time (albeit at Wembley). We should perhaps have wielded the axe in 1980 and given new talent time to grow
Excellent summing up of a great time to be an Alty fan, then and now. The 80/81 side won the title, the league cup and made the 3rd round of the FA Cup (against Liverpool) but they didn't have quite the dominance over opposition sides they'd enjoyed the previous season and there were a few backs to the wall performances where we ground out wins. Losing Graham Barrow at the start of 81/82 was a huge blow and we knew early on that season that the team was past its best - even so, we made it to Wembley in the Trophy and the 3rd round of the FA Cup. If we'd won the Trophy in 82 it may have papered over the growing cracks and done us more harm than good in the long run. The club and current team is sensibly evolving and inevitably certain players will have reached their level having done their bit for Alty.
A couple of very interesting posts. Tony Sanders built an excellent team, probably the best in our history, but he what he didn't or couldn't do was to build a second excellent team as the first grew older.
There was an attempt to do so in 1981-82 (which was a pretty good season in retrospect as we made the FA Cup 3rd Round, made the Trophy Final and won the Cheshire Senior Cup while finish halfway in the Alliance Premier League, although it was a decline from previous seasons, and I thought this was the turning point rather than the previous season). Derek Goulding, and then Phil Gardner and Paul Cuddy were all brought into the first team, with the latter two playing on for years, but the older players forced their way back into the team with only Cuddy playing at Wembley. Maybe Tony Sanders was soft-hearted or a bit too loyal to the players who had done so well for him in the past?
At the end of that season, I remember a number of the long-serving players were offered reduced terms. Some accepted and some left. A big difference between then and now is that the greater availability of substitutes (only 1 allowed at that time) means that it is a lot easier to blend young players gradually into the first team.
As for tomorrow's game, I notice that Dagenham and Redbridge manager Daryl McMahon says that he has learned "Nothing" from their earlier defeat to us, in their match preview as they have had a big turnover of players, not unlike ourselves, having just signed a player from Maidstone United, who has never played at National League level before.
www.altyfans.co.uk » General Category » Altrincham FC First Team
Dagenham Match Thread
Author
Topic: Dagenham Match Thread (Read 16725 times)