They’ve gone from being “garbage” to “great” inside a few weeks, now self-confessed control freak Darren Sarll is spotting an opportunity for Yeovil Town.

The Glovers are the National League’s form side thanks to five wins on the spin and a surge up the table which has taken the team lacking life early on this campaign up into fourth.

The Somerset side have seen off the challenge of Sutton United, Notts County, FC Halifax, AFC Fylde and Solihull Moors over the last few weeks – but the manager is still not totally happy!

Hard-to-please Sarll called element of the final 20 minutes against Fylde “disgusting” and didn’t enjoy things being out of his team’s hands.

“It’s a fantastic feeling winning games,” the manager said. “You can’t beat it. We were aggressive and there is a really great feeling amongst the squad.

“Last week against FC Halifax we were brilliant and in patches in the first half (against Fylde) I would say we were brilliant as well.

“But there is always room for improvement. From 70 minutes onwards we weren’t in control – that’s not nice, because everyone knows I am a control freak!

“I love winning games of football and we’re on a good little run right now.

“We’re training really well too, but even our fitness levels are going to need to improve.”

Few people know what to expect after falling out of the EFL, but perhaps going under the radar has helped the new manager – a 19-point return as we edge towards the quarter mark this weekend is rich reward for their positive approach.

Keep that strike rate up, and they give themselves a real chance of doing something very rare – returning to League Two at the first time of asking.

“Nobody is looking too far ahead and we’ve got a lot of difficult matches ahead of us,” he added.

“But you’ve got to enjoy the good moments you find yourself in. You should never lose the joy of winning.”

See, I’m hoping that we can follow this same model and it can happen to anyone. A combination of the right things happening at just the right time can certainly kick-start the wheel of fortune.

This will be a very difficult game for us as they are in a rich vein of form, will be tough to break down and will be a threat all night to our defence which isn’t the best but is by no means the worst.

If we take a point from this game I will be happy and (yes, you’ll all tire now of me mentioning it I know) the fact that I’ll be there watching won’t help the team’s cause!

This is all about momentum. When I watched Jake’s video of that goal and heard the gasps of disbelief in the audio, it made me think of how desperate we all are to see the team get better and that was like a gift from the heavens, Harry’s 95th minute winner.

How much momentum will the lads take into Tuesday night? Will they be fearful of Yeovil and pay them too  much respect?

Because I believe it is an important precursor to Saltergate (or whatever Chesterfield is calling itself these days). I’ve this premonition that if we lose Tuesday to the Glovers, we’ll win on Saturday at Chesterfield.

But also that if we beat Yeovil, we will fail to win Saturday, such is our topsy-turvy form; I’m sure a fair few Shots fans understand this and feel the same. Whatever, I am unanimous in this and so is Mrs. Slocombe.

 

HISTORY OF YEOVIL TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB

Association Football first came to town in the 1890/91 season and was played in conjunction with the Yeovil Rugby Club, both codes being staged on a ground in West Hendford. The soccer club was known as the Yeovil Football Club, and the two codes were played at the ground on alternate Saturdays. The birth of the football club we know today took place in 1895 with the formation of Yeovil Casuals. They played in green and white stripes, which reflected their rural surroundings, at the Pen Mill Athletic Ground. By the 1907/08 season the club name had changed to Yeovil Town Football Club and a new strip of green shirts with white cuffs adopted. 1908 saw the formation of another club in Yeovil, Petters United, their colours being amber and black and playing at Brickyard Lane.

After a few years, Petters United entered senior football in the same competitions as Yeovil Town Football Club and the rivalry between the two clubs became intense. Eventually, the two local teams merged to become Yeovil & Petters United. renamed Yeovil Football and Athletic Club Limited in 1923.

The amalgamation coincided with a move from the Pen Mill ground to Huish, the first match taking place on 28th August 1920, when the reserves entertained Christchurch in the Dorset League in front of 1500 faithful. For the next seventy years Huish, renowned for its slope from the near-side under the main stand up to the far touchline, would produce sensational FA Cup stories. Since 1990 the giant killers, (maybe that would have been an apt nickname), reside at the splendid Huish Park, where maybe more FA Cup dramas lie ahead, now as a League team following their promotion in 2003.

Taking League opposition scalps at the old and new Huish, amounting to a staggering nineteen, hasn’t been the only constant club factor. So were their colours. Green and white have always been their main strip, in various guises – ranging from all green with white collars and cuffs to all white with green collars and cuffs, sometimes white with green pinstripes, sometimes thicker green stripes, sometimes a green body with white sleeves, sometimes it’s a darker green and sometimes a light green, even going to green and white hoops for the 2003/4 season….

Yeovil Town’s actual soubriquet ‘The Glovers’ alludes to the making of gloves the area is renowned for. The town contained many leather making factories at one time, though only one remains open now. These days the Westland Helicopter factory is the town’s main employer.

No mention of ye olde slope these days?

Huish Athletic Ground more commonly referred to as Huish was a football stadium located in Yeovil, Somerset, England. It was the second home ground of Yeovil Town Football Club, after the Pen Mill Athletic Ground which they left in 1920, until the club’s departure for Huish Park in 1990.

The ground was most famous for having an 8-foot side to side slope and was the scene of one of the biggest FA Cup giant killings when Yeovil beat Sunderland in the fourth Round in 1949. The site is now occupied by the car park of a Tesco Extra hypermarket.

Thanks Wiki and how typical of Tesco – they’ll take over anything. We’ve one locally that was once a church!

Now let’s move on with a look at Yeovil’s club honours and top goalscorers through history…

Honours

Sky Bet League One – Play-off winners: 2012/13

Sky Bet League Two – Winners: 2004/05

Vanarama National League – Winners: 2002/03

FA Trophy – Winners: 2002

Isthmian League – Winners: 1987/88, 1996/97

Southern League – Winners: 1954/55, 1963/64, 1970/71

Southern League Western Division – Winners: 1923/24, 1931/32, 1934/35

Western League – Winners: 1921/22, 1924/25, 1929/30, 1934/35

Yeovil Town’s Top 20 EFL Goalscorers

45 – Phil Jevons
36 – Francois Zoko
29 – James Hayter
28 – Gavin Williams
27 – Arron Davies
25 – Dean Bowditch, Andy Williams
23 – Paddy Madden
22 – Terry Skiverton
20 – Darren Way
19 – Lee Johnson
18 – Otis Khan, Jonathan Obika
17 – Ed Upson
16 – Kevin Gall, Gavin Tomlin
14 – Marcus Stewart
13 – Bartosz Tarachulski
12 – Wayne Gray, Lloyd Owusu

Paddy Madden and Phil Jevons certainly came first to my mind when associating goalscorers with Yeovil Town but I wondered what had happened to James Hayter (pictured above) as since leaving Bournemouth he’s not been heard of – but a check on his age gave a clue as he’s now past the ripe old age of forty!

Anyway, that rounds off this article and best of luck to our lads tomorrow night. Let’s get the East Bank roaring us on to a second successive victory… see? I can do positive!

‘#COYS