St Leonards Bank on Barclay

Micky (Turka) Taylor, Author and Non-League Football Pundit

The date, 26th October 2001, a night that will live in my memory as manager of St Leonards for many reasons.

In this case in a Southern League Eastern Division game at Stonebridge Road, the home of Gravesend & Northfleet, which Dartford were ground-sharing.

As all managers know, you have to keep your ear to the ground all the time.

I heard that our former player, Dominic Barclay, wanted to come back to the club after trials with Kingstonian and a couple of professional clubs.

I had a chat with him and agreed terms and signed him and put him into the team for the home game on Saturday, 22nd October against Rothwell Town.

I have to say he must have put at least 50 or more supporters on our gate that day such was his presence being back at the club and being in the starting line-up. However, time and time again the sentence ‘football is a funny old game’ proves to be so right as would you believe it, our game against Rothwell ended up 0-0 and Barclay could not hit a barn door if he tried!

I had faith in him as a player and a person and after all, he had bashed in 19 goals in the latter part of the season before when I brought him to the club, and now the team was in better shape.

All that he needed now was game time, we did not lose the game but should have won it, which was a pity as the saying goes. Two points lost not a point gained.

The supporters were happy though to see him back, and so was I and the players and our chairman, who took some pleasing I can tell you, but all chairmen are like that I feel anyway, and why not, as they put a lot of time and effort in and in most cases a lot of money that they will never see a return on.

Enough now of the preliminaries what about the game itself and as any non-League manager, player or supporter will tell you, Dartford is a big club and there will never be such a thing as an easy game when you play them home or away.

On this night, on what I can only describe as a pristine playing surface, I was about to witness a performance from one of my teams that were as near to perfection as you would ever see.

As with all pre-match talks, I mentioned those words ‘get on the front foot and go at them from the start’ and ask all the questions.

Well, we could not have had a better start than in the 2nd minute when my faith in Dominic Barclay paid off when he came in on the far post to head us into the lead and give us the perfect start.

Dartford were, as you would expect, not going to lie down and gave as good as they got until 10 minutes from half-time when Danny Fletcher’s corner found Des Boateng who produced a great leap and a powerful header which gave former Hastings Town keeper, Tony Kessell, no chance.

St Leonards were now in full control with their movement and passing which had Dartford in sixes and sevens, and it came as no surprise when they added a third goal just before the interval when Barclay powered home a shot after some great play.

It was my job now as manager not to let the momentum of the team slip in any way in the second half, as being 3-0 seems okay, but one goal from Dartford and they will see daylight.

So, with that in mind, onto the front foot again and it was that man Barclay, after some of the best passing movements I had seen in years, who collected the ball on the edge of the box and turned to fire home our fourth goal, giving him his hat-trick and the match ball.

We were not finished yet, however, far from it, as we pressed time and time again, to the extent where we could have beaten almost any team the way we were playing.

As always, there is an incident in most games that gets to be a talking point, whether it be a bad call on an offside or a disallowed goal that should have been given but this was a different kind of incident and concerned me and my young talented midfield player, Des Boateng, and Dominic Barclay, who, after a great ball from midfield was through on goal only to be brought down and a penalty awarded.

All managers will tell you that your penalty taker is the man for the job at any time and in any game provided he is on the pitch, so why Boateng put the ball on the spot I had no idea at the time.

I asked the referee to halt the spot-kick and summoned the player to the touchline for words.

I said “if you take that penalty, I will pull you straight off the pitch as we have a nominated penalty taker in Dominic Barclay and, young man, you wouldn`t get near to the spot-kick if we had been 0-0 or 1-0 down because you would not like that responsibility. You must learn discipline as we are not over the park where players do what they want, we are a semi-professional football club, so get back out there and finish the game.”

Barclay duly dispatched the penalty, despite the hold-up and would you believe it, the ball was back on the spot again 5 minutes later for a foul on midfielder Jason Davy and up stepped Barclay again to score our sixth on the night, bringing his own tally to five which really spoke volumes about the player.

Dartford never gave up and fired home two late goals which made me furious, as I could not see any reason to take your foot off the pedal and allow that to happen.

Let’s take nothing away from the complete team performance though, it was outstanding football and showed how far we had come that season, as the club had never had a win like that away from home in the Southern League ever.

And what a great boost it was for our FA Cup game at Fisher Athletic the following Saturday, but Dominic Barclay knew he would be a marked man now and how was he going to handle that?

(Micky Taylor`s excellent book `Non-League Football - A Roller Coaster Ride To Beat Any` is available to buy from Amazon priced £12.99 (Kindle version £3.99. All proceeds to Cancer Research)