Interview ~ Gary Goodchild

Gary Goodchild stepped into the interview gap after Simmo vanished. He gave us an insight into the WWFC Youth Team.

Ted: I started by asking Gary to give us an idea about the players involved in the youth team set-up.

Gary: Basically we’ve fourteen players in the scholarship, the first year boys are straight from school last summer, then there’s the second and third year boys. The third year boys number just two and that’s Ben Townsend whose played in the first team and Peter Holsgrove. Then there are six second year and six first year boys. In the second year group there’s Roger Johnson who played for the first team against Cambridge last season, there’s Leeyon Phelan that people are talking about and he looks a good prospect.

Ted: Lawrie looks to be quite excited about young Leeyon as a prospect for the future.

Gary: He’s good quality, he’s a centre forward who scores goals, he’s big and he’s strong. He’s only seventeen so he’s got a long way to go, he’s got a lot of development in him. The other lad we like in that group is Ian Simpemba who’s a midfield player, and he’s another big strong player.

Ted: I personally know Ian he’s a nice lad...

Gary: So there’s Ian, Leeyon and Roger out of that group who’re doing very well. The other three in that group are doing very well so we’re not counting any of them out. In the first year group you’ve got the boys who’ve come direct from school so it’s a bit early to talk about them as they need a bit of time to get used to the day to day routines of training everyday. Coming from school where they’ve been used to training a couple of times a week and a Saturday game and then coming in here and getting hammered.

Ted: It's school to a full time job isn’t it?

Gary: Some of them do very well in the beginning and then hit the wall, so of them hit the wall early on, some of them never hit the wall and some hit the wall and never come through it, it varies, you can never tell. The first year you just leave them, you try to put work into them and gradually build strength into them. They’re a good bunch of lads; we’re third in our league at the moment which is the first part of the competition. There are twelve teams in the league and after the first phase which consists of twenty two-league games the league splits into three groups of four that’s of course the top, middle and bottom groups and they go in with the same levels from the West and Midland leagues. It’s a bit like Play-offs so the aim this year is to finish in the top four, last year we finished in the middle four and then we eventually won the play-offs, so we want to go up a notch and play against the best teams. That’s the aim and we’re well on the way to achieving that, we’re half way through and it’s looking good.

Ted: It was a bit of a blow losing last night to Brighton in the FA Youth Cup.

Gary: Yes! It was a blow and it was a substandard performance from us, it’s really disappointing that some of the ‘big hitters’ didn’t perform which then left us short. But I would have to say that they are a very good side, possibly the best side that I’ve seen at this level since I’ve been at this club. They were very strong, good on the ball and had three or four very good individual players as well, so but a lot of hard work and perhaps a stroke of luck they’ve accumulated some really good prospects.

Ted: Their back four looked strong.

Gary: They looked like men didn’t they and once they snuffed Leeyon out, once they’d beaten Leeyon up a little bit our threat had gone. Johnny Dixon is at the stage where he came in and got five or six goal very early, which was fantastic for a sixteen year old kid, he got ten last year as a fifteen year old but he’s hit the wall and for the last two or three games he’s looked a shadow.

Ted: Was it him that hit the post last night?

Gary: He hit the bar. Its funny because when we’d hit the bar an Leeyon had a penalty appeal turned down, which I thought was a penalty, that was probably our best spell and five minutes later they’d scored. For me as a coach it was disappointing because we didn’t play as well as we can, they were better than us and I still think that even if we’d played well they’d have beaten us because they were better as a team, they had better individuals in their team then us. We’ve got four, five, six good ones, they’ve got eleven or twelve, they didn’t look as if they had a weakness.

Ted: They were definitely a good side.

Gary: They were a very good side and they’ll go on. They’ve got Brentford in the next round and they’ll beat them.

Ted: I think we were looking forward to playing Brentford as we’d have done them.

Gary: Its just one of those draws, when I saw it I new it was the hardest draw. We did well to draw with them in the league; they were very good down there and then last week we were leading until twenty minutes to go. Bringing them back to Adams Park was probably wasn’t an advantage because the passed the ball very, very well last night. The number ten Chris McPhee who played upfront for them has played in their first team this year and so has number four Dean Hammond and number five Kevin Hemsley, their a good side.

Ted: They must have enjoyed the surface here.

Gary: They loved the surface said it was magnificent. I was disappointed with the way we played and the way we passed it, but as I said we played against a very good Brighton team.

Ted: With the club buying this sports ground, once they get the surfaces and amenities sorted out with the Youth team play their games there rather than at Molins?

Gary: I suppose that sometime in the future they’ll look to do that but I think we’re talking a couple of years rather than weeks.

Ted: Apparently the pitches are very poor at the moment...

Gary: It’s a matter of proper drainage and water, they need to be drained properly and watered in the summer. It isn’t really big enough to have one pitch roped off that we only play our games on. For that we’d need a bigger area, so that’s in the future. It’s a goof facility to have and it’s ours now so it’s up to us how quickly we put money into it. There’s a shell of a building up there and it could become a very, very nice little training ground.

Ted: In the summer, for pre-season the lads all went off to Norway.

Gary: Yes! We went to Norway for the second time. It’s a tournament that the elite clubs in Norway organize and they invite some foreign teams to take part in it. It’s really the wrong time of the year for English teams as we’re in pre-season. We went last year with players like Danny Senda, Mark Osborne and Martyn Lee (1997), well the lads enjoyed it and wanted to go again so when we were invited back and we went again. Its very good for team building, you get them all together and they stay in the hotel for eight or nine days. They’re Post Host standard hotels, three meals a day, good training facilities and matches twice a day. So it’s hard for that time of the year, it doesn’t really suit the English teams but it’s a good experience for everyone involved. We enjoyed it and all the lads enjoyed it, they’d like to go again so we’re hoping to get another invitation.

Ted: I supposed that for the lads seeing former YTS players like Martyn Lees & Andy Baird come through to be part of the first team must be encourage them?

Gary: There are a few who’ve come through, there’s Alan Beeton who’s a bit off the pace at the moment but Bairdy is a first team regular. Mo has broken through again this season, Ben has played again this year, Martyn played again last Saturday and of course there’s Danny Senda as well who has played the last couple of game for the first team. So that excellent for us, that’s what we’re doing, that’s what my jobs all about trying to get the lads through. Martyn had a good game Saturday and he’s been very patient and he’s a very good technical player and on Saturday he showed just what he can do, it was a very mature performance from him. He has the ability to perform like that at that level but he hasn’t always shown it when he’s been given the opportunity.

Ted: Possible one of his problems is his size and his weight, he does seem to get knocked about a bit?

Gary: But that’s all part of the game, it’s also confidence as well playing with the pros. I thought that, that was a very mature performance.

Ted: Probably more mature than some of the more regular players.

Gary: It was one of those games where it could have gone either way, you can play worse than that and still win and you can play better and still lose. With football, the ball is round and if we’d bundled the goal in we could have won it and everything is forgotten.

Ted: Did you notice that at the Youth team cup game Neil Smillie was here?

Gary: I’d heard that he was here but I didn’t see him as I was occupied with the boys in the dressing room and then with the press. I knew he was here because his son Jack Smillie is a YTS player here with us.

Ted: Isn’t that a strange situation for jack to be here after what happened to Neil?

Gary: Its just one of those things, Jack was here in the Centre of Excellence and enjoys being here at Wycombe. Its local from Reading, Jack wants to be a footballer so at the end of the day its about who offers him a scholarship. He likes us, we like him so it was a natural progression for him to come in as a scholar. The fact that his dad has been the manager here maybe strange from the outside but nobody here thinks anymore or any less of it. I’m a personal friend of Neil’s so it’s a bit strange for me to work with his son sometimes when I think that I was there the day after he was born, now I think I’m getting old! I know a few stories about Jack that’s caused him to blush up a bit in front of the lads. This is just one of those things in football, managers have sons who play for their club and sometimes they go and their son stays or he doesn’t but from the outside I suppose it can look a bit strange. There’s a lot of water passed under the bridge now and don’t forget Neil did a good job here with the Youth team.

Ted: It was Neil who really got it going wasn’t it?

Gary: Yes him and Adrian Cole started the thing off, he put us on the map and I like to think I’ve manage to take the baton a bit further forward. Youth team management or developing young players and winning second division football matches which Lawrie and Terry do is two completely different things. You would have to say that Neil was unlucky at the time because there were some pretty average players at the club then. Lawrie came in and was able to replace them. Football is just like life, it’s about being in the right place at the right time and that wasn’t a good time to be manager of Wycombe Wanderers. Neil had been caretaker before and I think he thought he had to take the opportunity, just to progress as a person and he basically burnt his fingers. He’s got himself a job now working for Nike and Nike have sponsored the Premier League with their footballs this year, the Merlin Nike ball so he goes around to all of the ‘big boy’ academes, its not a football coaching job but I think he’s enjoying it. Sometimes when you go out of football you look back and think "I wish I could coach" but certainly at first team level its not a stable profession, managers come and go. Lawrie’s been here the best part of two years and is doing really well, other people don’t last that long.

Ted: As we know here.

Gary: That’s right, how many managers have Wycombe had in the last few years, they come and they go. There have been some big names here and you got to say that Lawrie’s doing the best of any of them since Martin O’Neill. Alan Smith is a big name and John Gregory is probably and even bigger name, both came here and you’d have to say they both failed so I don’t think there’s any disrespect to Neil because he knows that he failed. He wasn’t able to get the results out of the players he had, but it was a difficult period.

Ted: Perhaps it wasn’t the right job for him at that time?

Gary: No! I think that’s about right.

Ted: Have you had any aspirations of being a first team manager?

Gary: Well I’ve coached first teams in Norway, so I’ve done both. My job is as Neil told me ‘The best job in the club’ because you’re actually working long term, Adrian and I work long term, we look into the future always. Last night was very disappointing the fact that it was a one off FA Youth Cup match. I’m bitterly disappointed that we couldn’t perform better than that and we under achieved but we’re looking to bring boys through. It isn’t just one game it’s a series of games over a number of years so I don’t live for the result every Saturday. Of course we like to win games and so do the boys as winning breeds confidence and confidence breeds better players but my jobs not on the line if we get beaten two or three times whereas a first team manager at certain clubs can be. I’ve got a stable job where I work with the players day to day and yes we do play matches and we’re expected to win a few games and we do and we’ve achieved some good stuff. I’ve been here two and a half years and there’s been five players from my team play in the first team which is pretty good. Mark Osborn has played a couple of games, there’s Martyn Lees, Danny Senda there’s Ben Townsend and Roger Johnson and they’ve all played in the last two and a half years that I’ve been here. I’m happy with what I’ve done but you can never rest on your laurels, you’ve got to keep going forward and working very hard. I would have to say that yesterday was one of the biggest ‘downs’ a real low point for both the boys and for me because we thought it was a very disappointing performance. We’ve been beaten before and we’ve been beaten more heavily but we just didn’t perform. That’s football, you’ll get some lows and you’ll get some highs but Youth football is all about developing kids into the first team. We’re a football club that can’t afford to spend millions or even hundreds of thousands on players, so we have to get our players from somewhere and we’re working through the centre of excellence into my team hoping to produce the players. It’s tough because you don’t get the best quality in to Wycombe Wanderers. They go to the Premiership clubs or the big first division clubs with academies. We’re fighting furiously with Brentford, Reading, Oxford, Swindon, Watford and Luton. We’re in that catchments area and you’ll have to say that sometimes you’ll end up with not even the second best quality so its fiercely competitive. It’s hard work because you’ve got to work daily knowing that you’re doing it for the two or three in the team that might just make it.

Ted’s Notes: I have to say thank you to Gary Goodchild for stepping into the breech after Michael Simpson let me down again. Especially as it’s quite obvious that he wasn’t very happy about the FA Youth Cup game against Brighton. I have always found both Gary and Adrian very approachable and enthusiastic about Wycombe Wanderers Youth Team.