Anoraks’ Corner – 2014 End of Year Review
from Ashford United’s Milton Keynes Correspondent
With the beginning of a New Year just hours away, it is
natural for any footy fan to take stock of where his or her beloved stands, and
of the prospects for the immediate future. The bare bones of it is that Ashford
United go into 2015 in fifth place in the Southern Counties East League, and
with the considerable bonus of, for the second consecutive year, still being
involved in the FA Vase, at the Fourth Round (last 32) stage. The prospect of
promotion to the Ryman League, which will have been the prime objective at the
start of the season, already appears to be fairly remote, though, with Phoenix
Sports looking very strong, with a record of 14 wins and three draws, from 17
games, and only SEVEN goals conceded. The Barnehurst-based club is currently
eight points ahead of us, with two games in hand.
However, life in the SCEFL is pretty good, IMHO, and this
veteran of many relegation threatened campaigns is enjoying supporting a team
that actually wins far more games than it loses. The score, so far this season,
is 13 wins, against four defeats. I also think that the Ashford faithful are considerably
buoyed by the team’s current good run of form, which is being led by Stuart
Zanone’s wonderful, and as yet unbroken, goal scoring sequence. There’s no hero
like a goal scoring hero, and Stuart is in the process of delivering everything
that we had hoped for, with a quite remarkable spell of 16 goals in his last
seven games. In fact, he is receiving the ultimate accolade of having those of
us with grey hair comparing him with The Great Alan Morton, who scored 46 goals
in 59 games for Ashford Town during that glorious 1972-3 season, which included
that FA Trophy Semi-Final appearance. (He also scored 178 goals in 361
appearances, in four spells, for Woking). Even Alan Morton never quite matched
Zanone’s current patch of form, but he has almost certainly come closest to it.
In a hectic period of eight games, from April the 4th to April the
23rd, in 1973, Alan Morton scored 15 goals – and I thank our friend Kevin
Hall for that information.
The currency I use for comparing goal scorers is the
number of minutes played per goal, and the following figures, (using a
qualification of a minimum of 500 minutes of playing time), for a period that
begins from the start of the 2005-6 season, show that Stuart is currently top
of the tree,
STUART ZANONE 23 scored @ 71 minutes per goal
Damien Abel 9 @ 79 mpg
Mo Takaloo 32 @ 84 mpg
Claude Seanla 6 @ 106 mpg
Jimmy Dryden 12 @ 133 mpg
George Fenwick 18 @ 177 mpg
BUSTER SMISSEN 13 @ 180 mpg
……..and that completes the list of strikers who have
scored for Ashford at a rate of a goal every other game or better. The next
current player in the list is Gary Mickelborough, whose 26 goals have come at a
rate of one every 218 minutes. GazMik is 13th in the list, one place
above Walid Matata and one behind Peter Williams, but would be as high as
SIXTH, if ten goals were the minimum qualification.
Another current jewel in the Ashford crown is goalkeeper
Joe Mant, and young Joe’s record also stands up pretty well in comparison with
his predecessors during the same ten-year period. Using the same measure of
minutes per goal, and using 1,000 minutes in goal as a minimum qualifying
period, our top five ‘keepers are as follows,
JOE MANT 119
let in @ 76 minutes per goal
Jamie Riley 47 @ 71 mpg
TONY ALLEN 19 @ 69 mpg
Jake Whincup 56 @ 61 mpg
Simon Overland 43 @ 60 mpg
Simon Overland has been playing for Faversham Town, who go
into 2015 on top of Ryman Division 1 South – unfortunately, Simon broke a leg
very recently, so let’s hope that he soon makes a full recovery.
One statistic that isn’t necessarily obvious from the
above figures is that Joe has made by far the most appearances for Ashford by a
goalkeeper, since 2005, having clocked up 9,091 minutes – Jake Whincup is next
in that particular list, having deigned to play for us for 3,420 minutes. (The
ironic tone relates to an ill-advised comment that Jake once made in relation
to playing for Ashford Town, which those who stuck it out during the 2006-7 and
2007-8 seasons will remember).
In terms of overall appearance time, Gary Clarke has
accumulated the most “mileage”, with a total of 13,090 minutes of playing time –
at the end of the FA Vase replay against Littlehampton Town, his total
contribution was a nice, round 13,000 minutes, with 21 goals. The only players
to have clocked up anything near to this figure, apart from Joe Mant, are
Mitchell Sherwood (9,916 minutes, and 28 goals) and Liam Whiting (9,502 minutes,
and 14 goals).
Taking a broader view of Ashford United’s three and a half
seasons, since The Reformation, the Club appears to be suffering from “second
season syndrome”, in terms of attendances. The new club’s inaugural year, in
the Kent Invicta League, yielded an average home gate of 202 for league games,
and this fell to 175 the following season; the total attendance for cup ties at
Homelands fell from 815 to 603. After promotion to the Southern Counties East League,
the average gate for home league matches was 221, for the 2013-14 season, but this
has fallen to 183 for the seven home games played to date. Of course, it is unlikely
that this season’s aggregate home attendance for cup ties will match the heady
heights of last season, when a total of 2,289 souls attended the ten matches –
but the score so far is 575 “not out”, with the prospect of a decent crowd for
the FA Vase Fourth Round tie at home to Eastern Counties League leaders Norwich
United, on the 17th of April.
