Welcome back to another edition of Sutton United Talk Time on Podcast! This week, host Mike is joined by regulars Chris and Andy for a lively chat about the sheer joy of winning, the changing atmosphere at Gander Green Lane, and the crucial push out of the relegation zone. It's the Sutton Podcast in association with Lucky Star Gin, and we're diving deep into the emotional side of football fandom.
Mike Dowling
Hello and welcome to another episode of Sutton United Talk Time on podcast. It's the Sutton podcast in association with Lucky Star Gin. If you're a regular listener, thank you very much and glad to see you, hear you again. No, glad to have you, whatever it is.
Mike Dowling
And if you're a new listener, you're very, very welcome and I hope you stick around. I'm your host, Mike. And with me today, we have Chris and Andy. We love hearing from you.
Mike Dowling
Join the conversations, tag us on social medias, at Sutton Podcast and chat with other fans, get the engagement up and get it in front of other eyes. So we skipped hello, but how are you, Chris? How are you?
Chris
I'm good. So as as longtime listeners may recall, I am one of the tunnel stewards. And yes, they was my due to various things was my first game of the of the new regime. So yeah, so so I was kind of infused.
Chris
So yes, there's more on that later.
Andy
Yeah,
Chris
very good. Yes.
Mike Dowling
And Andy,
Chris
how are you?
Andy
How can I be anything but great after yesterday? Yes,
Mike Dowling
I mean it absolutely should not affect our mood whatsoever and we're all grown-ups and we're all adults, we understand this and yeah, it definitely affects our mood. No matter how much we try and pretend, no, no, no, it's fine, it doesn't affect me, never too high, never too low, it's like bollocks.
Chris
Most Sundays I help at Junior Park Run over at Nonsuch and the regulars noticed that I was wearing a Sutton top for the first time in a while.
Mike Dowling
Um, right. Various bits of club news. Oh God, there's loads. Um, so Fipsy's left.
Mike Dowling
Um, good luck to him. I know, um, probably I haven't spoken to Chris about it at all, but it's probably a really, um, difficult decision, but it's one of those where he's been saying all along, it's a big squad and something has to give. But, um, so yeah, good, good luck to him and thank you for everything. So that you did, especially that, um, was it winner?
Mike Dowling
Yeah. The winner against Farnham. Gary Otto and Costa was over, so it was great to see them at the match. So not suggesting they have to come over all the time, but if that's the influence they have, then be at every game, please.
Mike Dowling
There was a great day. We were going to try and get one of them on to talk about it, but the Aussies invaded, and there was quite a few Aussie fans over yesterday. They happened to be standing in front of me, and I ended up chatting to quite a few of them. Well I was disappointed that my wonderful, wonderful joke on social media of Aussie fans are coming wasn't picked up as the holidays are coming song.
Mike Dowling
Aussie fans are coming, Aussie fans are coming. I thought that was brilliant and no one, no one took it on. I'm guessing the fact that Andy's holding his head in his hands and rolling his eyes is possibly why.
Andy
Extraordinary as usual Mike. As
Mike Dowling
usual, creative minds. that poor Sally has had to put up with all these years with no one else. She's had a solitude of this problem. FA Cup match, the hospitality is already sold out.
Mike Dowling
So it's looking like it's going to be a big, big crowd. So get your tickets in for the 5.15 kickoff. Captain's evening is postponed, possibly due to one of the three people that was going to be doing it is now not at the club anymore, and also I think it was only found out yesterday that Chris had decided to give the players Monday off, which would be a bit harsh then on those players that are off on Monday to have to charge back in for Monday evening.
Mike Dowling
And the FA Cup trophy draw is tomorrow evening. Andy, you did a very nice detailed post about that. So who did you... We
Andy
can't draw Spenny Moore! We
Mike Dowling
can't get Spenny Moore! We couldn't have got them anyway, could we? No, not in this round, no. But yeah, that draw is taking place, so another chance.
Mike Dowling
And we can go into these things with a bit of confidence now. And yesterday was the National League free up day of action, where all the matches kicked off at 3.03. Obviously, it's really important for everyone to visibly support this. Just quickly on that, what do you two think?
Mike Dowling
Is that going to have any effect? Do you think we're going to get it? What do you think,
Chris
Chris? It relies upon Turkey's voting for Christmas. Yeah. That's that's the problem.
Chris
I mean, OK, sure. I mean, we've gone from one up when we feel like it to two up. I mean, so like surely eventually it will, but like there'll be clubs and particularly I think the plight of Morecambe. might weigh heavy on voters in League 2.
Chris
Because if Morecambe do a York and have successive relegations, then yeah. I think it's probably not going to happen. But also Morecambe have, shall we say, special circumstances, whereas York, when they got double relegation in our first season back in the National League, when we came up into it, York didn't have all of the financial brouhaha that that's been happening over in Morecambe.
Mike Dowling
When we were in the league and they were talking about it with that Wrexham and Notts County mad season when they both got a huge amount of points, I was like, do you know what, it should be the way you voted before should
Andy
be the way you vote now.
Mike Dowling
So all the league clubs that were in the conference will go, well, you said no before. You can't now argue for it. Obviously, my mind has been changed by the fact we're back down in the National League.
Andy
But Andy, what
Mike Dowling
are your thoughts on it?
Andy
Yeah, I mean, Chris raised a good point about Walker and other potential basket cases, because there have been a few. Macclesfield a few seasons back was a big problem for the league and Bury, of course. So these clubs that are spending beyond their means. will do anything to save their league status.
Andy
And I don't know. Again, it's a case of persuading league teams to say yes. So there needs to be a lot of lobbying and a lot of lobbying from non-league teams to basically say, look, we have three up. This is going to be better for you because we've got this team in the National League, we've got this team in the National League, who are getting attendances better than half of the teams in League 2.
Andy
Vote for it. OK, it's going to be in your interest to do it. But I think we're a long way off. I think Chris has hit the nail on the head when he said Turkey's voting for Christmas.
Andy
The bottom half of League Two will not vote for it at all. The teams that were perennially struggling, the Harrogates and the Newports and teams like that, who were always bottom half, they won't vote for it. The only way it will happen will be if the League One sides say, well, actually, this might be better for us, because we'll actually end up having a higher quality League Two.
Mike Dowling
Well, it could also be better for them because they could then argue, well, actually, we should only have three down now. Yeah, because we want three down and three up as well. So to make it even across. I did note that he's kind of said a couple of times that he's been a victim of it last year with that.
Mike Dowling
But that wouldn't necessarily change to going down from the National League, because if you went three up from each of them, I mean, six would be going down from the National League. I mean, it would be great to keep it fresh, but it would be a very difficult way to do that, wouldn't it? Yeah,
Chris
I also suspect that that might be almost part of a condition that it doesn't become sort of like, you know, the free up doesn't spread.
Mike Dowling
Yeah. I mean, that'd be mad, wouldn't it? You'd have nine new teams in the league every year. Lots
Andy
of
Mike Dowling
people here to tick places off, they love it. But we'll go to the, well, the only thing I did is I did the hospitality again and I got to speak to two legends yesterday, two Hall of Famers, Tony Raines and Mike Cornwall, and I actually did alright, I think. I did some good questions where I got them to tell the old stories and then current things on the current side and the modern game and stuff. But, yeah, I took the compliments in my usual style.
Mike Dowling
People said, that was good, and I went, thank you, and ran away. I can pretend, I can give it all that, I'm great, and as soon as someone else says, oh, that was right, no, no, no, leave me alone. But yeah, I'm really enjoying them now. Right, quick chat on the lineup expectations.
Mike Dowling
Chris, how did you go into the, I mean, obviously, you've just said you've not really seen anything live and in the flesh, but how did you go into the game expecting, or what did you expect, and was there any surprises in the lineup for you?
Chris
I kind of went in somewhat hopeful just because of our recent kind of form and also Halifax don't seem to travel particularly well. So I don't think there were any special surprises. One observation, because their captain is their goalkeeper, who is one of the tallest people you're ever likely to meet outside of a basketball court. And I kept on thinking, I recognize you, but it might just be that I recognize him from last time Halifax came.
Chris
But yes, yeah. He had to bend down to go through some of the doors that we had. And I don't think our doors are small, but
Mike Dowling
also it
Chris
might just be his force of habit, because if you're that tall, you probably...
Mike Dowling
Yeah, I mean, Harry and Omar used to have to dip, but I don't think I had to bend. What about yourself, Andy? Any hopes, expectations and any surprises for you?
Andy
Well, I think there's seven or eight players, basically, which... Chris has decided on his first choices, which is not bad. I mean, it was, you know, it worked for Matt Gray. Matt Gray knew his starting 11 and it was a case of...
Andy
Yeah, exactly. That ended up being a bit of a negative buzzer. We got to the third season in the EFL. But, you know, you've got players like Pruti and Taylor and Simpa and and Harris, and probably now a Bonner, who are going to be on the team sheet week in, week out, barring suspension injury, I think.
Andy
I was surprised that Madison wasn't there, but then I heard he picked up an injury, so that made sense. And yeah, it's kind of like, I think if you're following Sutton games week in, week out, you're starting to probably see a settled, regular side. And I don't think that's a coincidence in terms of how we're performing either.
Mike Dowling
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I haven't actually spoken at us, but they did say or Chris said that last week at Morecambe, he was injured and that's why he didn't start, but he was able to come on and help us out there. Before I forgot to write and mention it in the club news, sorry, the ladies won 3-0 again today, so they are back to winning ways. Although, I thought it was a bit harsh.
Mike Dowling
I mean, obviously, there's other things at play, but Gabby Williams, who was playing very well, we lost our first game and she bloody left. I'm assured it was just coincidence, but I'm like, wow, that's some standards. And so all these are kind of all over the place. I've just made some notes.
Mike Dowling
But highlight from the outcome of yesterday is we are out of the relegation zone. We have, in the last few weeks, moved off the bottom, moved up, moved up, and now completely out of it. Not completely out of the whole problem, but we're out of the relegation zone. How much of a psychological difference do you think that will make to the team, Andy?
Andy
Oh, huge. Absolutely huge. It's, I mean, last time I spoke on the pod was Aggie's first game, oddly enough. So it's quite nice to come back 10 games later to kind of review where we are.
Andy
I think it's huge. There's the confidence I've seen the players gain over the course of those 10 games. Every single game, they're more confident. They're more willing to take pot shots.
Andy
They're more adventurous with how they play, oddly enough. You just see some, I remember the match against Eastley, for example, they were just playing balls into space that you wouldn't have thought they would have played into. And then there was a certain player running into it. And how you can compare that win to this win and say, actually, we changed our style to match the opponent.
Andy
So yeah, looking at who we're actually playing against. So I think there was, yeah, it's huge that we're out of that. And now there's a real incentive to stay out of it. But yeah,
Mike Dowling
yeah. Brilliant. And Chris, similar thoughts or?
Chris
Yeah, I mean, I remember I think it was on the BBC coverage after, maybe after the FA Cup game or the book ended up being the first leg of it, the final one, that he was, Aggie, is it Aggie or Ag? Aggie, I think. Aggie was saying that, yeah that he'd come in and the confidence wasn't there and he's focusing on rebuilding the confidence and you could definitely just see that in like how they've how they've been now compared to you know how they were in September so yeah
Mike Dowling
Also, milestones here, third clean sheet of the season. Technically second under Aggie, I don't know if we can really count. He started on the Friday and we got a clean sheet the very next day, but I mean, it was under his management. Third clean sheet of the season.
Mike Dowling
Is that important or is it just picking up the points being important? Because I know he likes to play the you score one, we'll score 27 type of football. But do you think that's important as well, Chris?
Chris
Yeah, I think again, it just adds to confidence. And also as well, I think it helps calm fans nerves a bit. Speaking for a friend, because like yesterday, when When the penalty happened, because I was I was in a food queue, so I didn't see the incident. I I heard a bit of a kind of noise and I turned around.
Chris
I was like. no and was just relieved that we'd managed to hang on to it. I mean, OK, sure, I would like our defence to be a bit more organised. I mean, but certainly, you know, you get the most important thing is to get wins.
Chris
You get wins by scoring more goals in your position. Yeah, OK, yes, we do that way. It's better that than nil-nils. But
Mike Dowling
if they don't score, we can't lose. Andy, important
Andy
for you for the MGs. I mean, the flip side to that is, obviously, this is the 11th game in charge. First game, we scored no goals. Every other game since then, all the other 10, we've scored at least two goals.
Andy
So we've instantly rectified one problem. Now we're starting to rectify the other. Defence was a problem all season. Defence was a real issue.
Andy
We were scoring goals before Anki came along, but it's much more consistent now. And really, the Eastern League game should have been 2-0. We gave away a City penalty. And again, we gave away a City penalty this time.
Andy
So we've got to cut that out. I think I counted it up as 11 penalties we've conceded this season. I'm
Mike Dowling
counting this up earlier, not today, last week, and I've only got sort of eight or nine, so I must be missing something
Andy
somewhere. If you include the National League Cup games, it's 11. Oh, that might be what, okay. Yeah.
Andy
And so, it's just like, really? Having another penalty is like, I mean, Yeah, Tommy made a great save. I don't know how much he knew about it, but he still made a great save. But I think getting the clean sheet is so vitally important, particularly at home.
Andy
We shouldn't be conceding. I mean, you go back to Boer and Wood back in September. You don't score three goals and lose. You don't.
Andy
And we did. So by making sure the defence is shoring up and the defence, again, like the rest of the side is getting much more confident. And I mean, particularly, and I'm going to name them here, Pruti and Taylor have improved so much under the new management, particularly Pruti. And it just some of some of the interceptions they're making, it's just it's, yeah, it's really, really good.
Andy
So I think Yeah, the clean sheet really, really neat. It's very, very important. The fact that we can do it and win by doing it. Yeah, that's what we need to do.
Mike Dowling
Yeah, so I was going to come on to it, but we might as well go for the defensive discipline now. I mean, lots of people saying possibly Brodie's best game
Andy
for
Mike Dowling
us. Now, obviously, I think he gave away the penalty.
Andy
Even
Mike Dowling
so, he had a solid game. And Jack, I think his problem is his standard has been set. So now everyone's expecting him to play the eights every match. So if he drops it, it's going to be noticeable.
Mike Dowling
Do you think that discipline is there now? Have we nailed it? Or do you think there's still gonna be stuff to do? And to be fair, Aggie has always said, when I'm talking about defence, I'm not talking about the four or five players who are playing in defence, I'm talking about the entire side.
Mike Dowling
Do you think it is something we've got sorted now? Or is it well on the way? And is it the bringing in the players like Jake Taylor? I
Chris
think it's still a work in progress to be fair. I mean there were some kind of like heart and mouth moments but yeah so I think But it is important that defence is the whole team. Because if you've got the ball in the opposition's corner, then you're unlikely to concede a goal. So it's best to just keep it up there as much as you can.
Chris
And that just requires the whole team just being able to put on pressure.
Andy
Yeah, I think, again, it's not, I think the big difference for me is not necessarily that, I mean, obviously the defenders are playing with more confidence and have improved their performance, but I think one of the big issues we had under Morrison, and this was, I spotted this against Forest Green and it carried on, was that lack of holding midfielder. There was literally no cover for the defence, big gaping holes, teams were just running at us. Yeah, we tried Phipps in that position and he was okay.
Andy
Muller coming back was better and also has the ability to move back into fence if we need to, but we were really missing Woodyard. So now we've got basically a choice of Muller, Woodyard and the other Taylor to do that kind of like tenacious, dogged, holding midfielder sort of Craig Eastman type role. And that was what we were missing. Now, having that, it's allowed the defenders to be more confident.
Andy
I mean, to be honest, they didn't make many mistakes yesterday. They cleared most of the... There wasn't really that much for Tommy to do.
Mike Dowling
Yeah.
Andy
It was actually quite straightforward.
Mike Dowling
First of all, I'm going to have to talk to Jake and ask him how this experienced player, played at very good levels, likes to be referred to as the other Taylor. I'm sure he's going to love that.
Chris
It's better than kind of like, the guy that looks like Kenny Davis. Somebody,
Mike Dowling
I can't remember who said it to me. And apologies if it's either one of you that I'm just going to put on the spot. But somebody said to me, he looks like Nikki Bailey and Kenny Davis's love child. And I was like, ooh.
Mike Dowling
Should we move on? It's a horrible four. But the penalty, like Chris, it was at the other end. I couldn't really see it, I'm going to be honest with you.
Mike Dowling
I wasn't sure. I was going to watch it back. And then, as I said before, we started recording when we saw Amber Cunningham and Frankie, who is no fan of that referee in particular, said it was a fair penalty. So I'm like, I'm not going to look into this anymore.
Mike Dowling
Andy, I potentially think you're a little harsh with saying he didn't know a lot about it because he was diving and the ball was kind of going over him and he dropped his hand back to stop it. So, I think he was going full pelt and then moved his hand back to stop it. So, I think it was actually a better save. That was
Andy
a great
Mike Dowling
save, yeah. Yeah, much better save. And I mean, he obviously was delighted with it. Oh, absolutely.
Mike Dowling
He wouldn't be. At that penalty, and I'm going to ask you both the same question, when the penalty was given, in my mind suddenly went, oh God, it's only 2-0, because up until that point, I was comfortable. I was breathless, blow up, because we've got this. It's done.
Mike Dowling
They've got nothing. And I don't want to name drop, but here we go. Terry Bullivan, when I said that to him, he went, absolutely, they had nothing. We covered everything.
Mike Dowling
He goes, they didn't look like scoring apart from that penalty. Yeah. Can't believe Terry agrees with me again. That's like the fourth time.
Mike Dowling
Or he's just been really nice. I don't know. But were you feeling it was comfortable up until that moment? Did you have that little panic of, Christ, it's only 2-0?
Andy
It was, it was really weird, right? So there was a season about, probably about 11 years ago, something like that, where we're underdogs, we were just churning out 2-1 victories. I think we had about 10 or 11 in the second half of the season. And it was always we'd go 2-0 up, they would get one back, the match would finish 2-1, right.
Andy
And you never felt at that point that it was you, you're worried. If it was three or four weeks ago, I would have been like, Oh, God, you know, but yesterday felt more like that DOS season. Halifax, I think we made look poor. I don't think they're a poor site.
Andy
I think the way we approached the game yesterday and how we played made them look worse than they were. So, I mean, I was obviously pleased as punch that we, you know, we saved the penalty. But I actually wasn't that worried at that point. It was really odd.
Andy
Yeah.
Mike Dowling
Very strange feeling, wasn't it? Yeah. Because there's been times when we've had the conversation that we were 4-0 up at Walsall. Yeah, Walsall was at ours and we were 4-0 up at half time.
Mike Dowling
we're all standing there going, I don't know if they get one back early. Chris, were you comfortable? Were you feeling like, okay, this is it? That's the Sutton fans.
Chris
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I was, uh, I think I, because I was seeing, how the other results were going, and I was just feeling it was so important that we got out of the relegation zone.
Chris
And I, yeah, I was, I was somewhat concerned. And yeah, and I could just, I don't confidence is such a special and precious thing, and I wasn't wanting anything that would start breaking it. And
Andy
yeah,
Chris
and the same way that like if if say, you know, when when we go down to Cornwall on Saturday, if we if we if we lose, I mean, at least we can say, oh, well, it was an away game. But the important thing is to kind of make Gander Green Lane a fortress, rather than have a welcome mat for opposition. And yeah, so it was just so, so important. I was just so nervous, but then I...
Chris
Yeah, I I I always will be. No, I think I started to relax when when we got to like the 88th 89th minute. I was like, OK, we'll probably get through this.
Mike Dowling
Neil said a couple of weeks last time he was on. He said no, I didn't think it was in the bag, even after the referee blown the whistle for something was going to happen. Yeah, right. I was laughing when
Chris
you started. Sorry, I was just going to say I nearly started just crying with relief. when like when that final was and and there were and and like there was rain coming or drizzle or whatever it was was coming down and I think the thing was I just felt that Sutton were back. Yeah yeah
Mike Dowling
that's a general thing I think where and which we got to talk about don't worry but I laughed when you were talking about that because I'd written down Fortress because it's back-to-back wins in the league for the first time in a year And it was this time last year that we got wins on the 16th, 26th, and 30th of November against Maidenhead, Solihull, and Fylde. And our next home game is the 29th of November. So we could get three in a row at home in the league when we're playing Gateshead.
Mike Dowling
So it was like, is that, and you've touched on it, Chris, so Andy, is that going to be really, really important that we start churning out the results at home?
Andy
Yeah.
Mike Dowling
Yeah.
Andy
Absolutely. You can't, if you've got, if you're rubbish at home, you're not going to get anywhere. Um, all our wins obviously have happened at home. Um, so we need to start trying to get a few points on the road, but again, we start, there's, there's no reason why, I mean, we've only got three league matches to Christmas, which is really odd going into mid November.
Andy
Um, one of those is at home against the Boston form team. in the division. Gateshead are imploding at the moment. So, you know, it's our best opportunity to do it.
Andy
And if we can, yeah, if we can win three on the trot leading up to Christmas, that'd be great. Because we've got all the shot on Boxing Day. They're not a great choice either. We could be, if we play our cards right, we perform to the level that we have been performing in the last three or four games, we could be in a very healthy position come the end of the
Mike Dowling
year. I think, again, we'll talk about those games in a moment, but I think the way it's building up, all the confidence is going to start going and then that builds its own momentum and that's when the luck starts going for you because you're chasing down balls that you might have just thought, oh, what's the point? And I'm not saying any players made a conscious decision to go, I'm not running, but it's those little moments where you hesitate and the chance is gone.
Mike Dowling
But let's go on to, I mean, the midfield. I mean, you've got Simper and Harris who are kind of controlling things a little bit more now. They're gelling really, really well, obviously, with that holding behind them. How critical are those two going to be for our push up the table for the rest of the season?
Mike Dowling
Andy, we'll start with you on that.
Andy
Yeah, I mean, vitally important. Simpa is doing what he did last season. Simpa started off really slowly. It was only around Southend last season, around mid-September, where we started seeing the good side of him.
Andy
And again, he is consistently good. And he's a player that, again, one of those players that can perform magic. He's absolutely... He's the one at the moment, although my opinion may be changing, who it's like I'm most worried about in the transfer window.
Andy
Put it that way. That's the best way of describing it. Harris, right? Harris gets a lot of stick from the fans.
Andy
A lot of stick. I've heard more, well, at least two fans, maybe more, literally shout out, you lazy bastard at him, right? And he's not. That's the thing.
Andy
He's just very, he's just gangly. It's just the way he moves. He can't help that. But I think, again, he's another confidence player whose confidence was shot because of his injury.
Andy
It's taken him a lot of time to get back up to pace, but now I think Aggie's doing exactly the right thing with him, is nurturing him, and we are starting to see the best of him. And a lot of people have said that that was Harris' best game of the season. I think that was probably spot
Chris
on. He
Andy
was brilliant yesterday.
Chris
Yeah, I mean, he was posing all kinds of questions that Halifax weren't answering. So yeah, it was one of the best games I think I've seen him play.
Mike Dowling
And it's that running down things that he's got no right to be chasing down. I did wonder, I mean, I've heard some of those as well, Wendy, but I did wonder, is it because before the injury, he was clearly our best player at the time? Because again, it was early last season. before simps was pushing on it was before will had started scoring all those goals for fun and then it was a big loss when he was out and i'm wondering are people trying to compare
Andy
I think people have got selective memory, actually. I think, on his day, he was our best player. But he was either absolutely brilliant or absolutely terrible. He'd never had an okay game before he had his injury.
Andy
Again, I'm going to say this, I could be bored of saying the word consistency, but he didn't have any. Now I think he's developing a lot more of that. He's, he's improving as a player, which is what you want to see every player do. So, yeah, I think those people who may have been a bit critical will remember, will remember his really, really good performances, but will forget like Tamworth at the start of the season where he was atrocious.
Andy
And yeah, people generally don't like to remember bad memories, so I like the good ones. No, of
Mike Dowling
course. Right, let's talk about the goals. First of all, I cannot love this boy anymore. I thought I could not love this boy anymore.
Mike Dowling
Junior got his goal. It's been coming. I've been saying week after week on Junior, don't worry, it's coming, it's coming. What a player we have got.
Mike Dowling
I mean, he loves this club. He will do anything. I mean, Steve was really complimentary about him saying he's ready even if he's not involved. He's watched matches.
Mike Dowling
He's watched things back. He's preparing, even if he's just on the bench and he gets on for five minutes. Aggie, just the same, but he's putting him left back, right back. He's going, yeah, I'll do it.
Mike Dowling
I'll do it. I'll do it live. But his performance, especially over the last few weeks and yesterday, Chris and the goal, what do you say about
Chris
Junior? Oh, excellent. I mean, I'm just I'm just so thrilled for him. And I mean, yeah, because he's been he's been creating chances and yeah.
Chris
I watched that goal back this afternoon. It was just brilliant. And also his joy, his absolute delight, like when he was after the game, because that was the thing that was interesting. So he was clearly delighted when he scored it and players all came round and everything, but he wasn't kind of milking it.
Chris
However, At the end of the game, running over to the Collingwood Road end, and it was just lovely. Absolutely lovely. You could just see how much it meant to him.
Mike Dowling
Yeah, and Andy, I mean, we're getting more of this now with social media that we never really got before, but seeing how many of the players were delighted for him to score just shows what kind of person he is. I mean, anyone who's met him or dealt with him or seen him at any of the events will know that he is a great, great guy, but all the players go for it as well. I mean, how did you feel about
Andy
him? Firstly, I was over the moon for him. He's worked so hard. He's done so well.
Andy
He deserved that. And actually, the reason why he scored it is the thing that I can't fathom about him. And that is, how can someone so young have such a mature, intelligent approach to football? He plays like he's got 10, 12 years experience at this level.
Andy
It's just, it's, it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. He is going to be a huge star. Huge.
Andy
So him being at the right place at the right time. Other players his age, or even maybe slightly older, wouldn't have been there. He was there. He knows, he reads the game so well for someone so young.
Andy
He's, he's a, he's a real asset. And I think now He is one of those players in that group where I think he's going to put him in every single
Mike Dowling
game. Yeah, he's making it really difficult to be honest. And he's always said, if you've got the shirt, it's up to someone
Andy
else to
Mike Dowling
get it off you. So other one, other goal, the warrior. I mean, I'm still shuddering when I've read the message. Oh, dislocated shoulder.
Mike Dowling
Oh, are you all right, Aunt Brendan? Yeah, they just popped it back in. Okay. I'm just trying to imagine a cat just getting his shoulder back.
Mike Dowling
But his goal, when I first saw it, I was like, did he just scuff that in? I mean, the finish was great watching it back, obviously. But Chris, talk us through his goal and more importantly,
Chris
the build up. From what I saw, it did look like a scuff. I mean, I'm not going to really add too much more. So I think the build up, I might just pass over to Andy.
Chris
But yeah, I think for me, again, it was relief. It was like, oh, we may win this. We're tuning up. Yes.
Mike Dowling
Go on then Andy, what did you think
Andy
of
Mike Dowling
that?
Andy
Sorry, Jennings in the build-up. That was just outrageous, wasn't it? Absolutely outrageous. Was it four or five players?
Andy
He just left them for dead. He just sent them goodbye. What? Oh, hang on.
Andy
Goodbye again. And then he floated the ball over. I'm like, nah, shame that's not going to go in there. And then Brandon's like, oh, hello.
Andy
I love that. I
Mike Dowling
mean, I don't
Andy
think, I think we'll struggle to see a better example of close skill as we did Jennings in that build up. It was just like, wow.
Mike Dowling
I mean, we're not going to go as far as to say anyone could have scored it, because, hello, it's me talking. So we're definitely not going with that. But I did retweet the goal and did put a parental advisory on it, because that was naughty. It really was.
Mike Dowling
Very quickly, the subs. Again, I don't want to talk bad about any of the players that we've ever had or anything. It's a confidence thing. But you felt when the subs were coming on, you're fine.
Mike Dowling
There's no one that you're sitting there going to go, oh, God, hang on. We could be in trouble here. And a quick word on Osman. Andy, start with you.
Andy
Osman nearly scored with his first touch, didn't he? That would have been a right... I think he's going to worry some defences. Put him up against the worst defence in the league, Gateshead.
Andy
At the end of the month, oh, they're going to be petrified, absolutely petrified, by his sheer scale and his sheer size. I think, yeah. I think it was a good solid start. I mean, the guy hasn't had that much football for various reasons.
Andy
But speaking to my cousin, who's a big AFC Wimbledon supporter, he says, actually, he thinks this guy's better than Jennings. And I'm like, really? Jennings is pretty good. Yeah, no, this guy is really, really good.
Andy
He's another one that you might have him for three months, but you should try and keep him to the end of the season because he'll pay you back in kind so much.
Mike Dowling
I did hear that, I think the one or the first training session he had, he was a little surprised about the intensity of the training and it caught him by a little bit surprise and he was like, I need to catch up with this level. So I think, again, he's one of those that is only going to get better once he's kind of got used to it all. But Chris, what do you think about the subs and Osman?
Chris
Or
Mike Dowling
Ozzy, I think he's
Chris
Ozzy. OK, the thing about Ozzy, and I think I'm a little concerned about kind of about loan players from AFC, given the AFC seem to be talking about there being some kind of like problems getting investments and whatnot in case there ends up being like a bit of a fire sale. in January.
Chris
So I think that is there. I know that people say don't fall in love with lone players. I think at the moment I would be particularly nervous about falling in love with a lone player from a club that seems to be talking about Yeah, they need to get more financial backing. Maybe they might be just doing that as some kind of weird negotiation strategy with someone, who knows.
Chris
But yeah, but like the subs in general, yeah, I wasn't nervous. I mean, to be honest, I am seldom nervous unless we're kind of like getting somebody out of position or, you know, like, Yeah, we didn't have anything like, say, that Torquay game when we asked Sy Dariner if he would like playing as a goalkeeper. Thank you very much.
Mike Dowling
It wasn't that one, it was one where we had to have Omar in defence, someone else, I can't remember what it was now, someone else playing in midfield, it was just about six players. I think it was Swindon, we just had so many players out of position. It was like an inter-season game where you all just put your positions in a hat and you drew it and you go, that's what you're playing.
Andy
You don't remember the Surrey Senior Cup final against Woking at Kings Meadow where by the end of the game we had so many injuries and basically had only one recognised defender on the pitch and
Chris
that was Bundo.
Mike Dowling
But then Chris, just following on, if they are going to have a fire sale, if those players have performed, obviously I've got no inside information whatsoever, but I would imagine the investors would go, actually, that's an investment, because if we were able to get them cheaply and then bounce them on, that is a definite, what would be an investment, so that could work in our favor. Yes,
Chris
but they may also want to be sold to a League 2 club or something, who knows?
Mike Dowling
We'll make
Chris
them love us
Mike Dowling
too much, don't worry. Right, let's quickly go post-match reactions. Actually,
Andy
Andy, I
Mike Dowling
wrote this down before you agreed to step in last minute, and it was one of the, I mean, everything else we've covered, but it was the general air of enjoyment, busyness, and the difference in atmosphere that you had covered, saying the cues for the drinks, cues for everything just seemed better.
Andy
I mean, it was bizarre. It was really vivid. I'd walk around to the fan zone at halftime, and the whole atmosphere just felt completely different. People were talking to each other.
Andy
People were happy. People were buying more stuff, which they do when they're happier. And it was packed out. And I haven't seen it that busy all season.
Andy
It was just a complete change of atmosphere. It's amazing what winning can do.
Chris
I have a neighbor who occasionally comes along to Sutton games, and we were chatting at the bus stop a month or so ago, and he said, oh, I've been going to see Sutton, mainly to see them lose. And he had kind of stopped going. And I'm not going to suddenly say, oh, and he was there yesterday. I didn't see him if he was.
Chris
yeah but like that's that's the thing you are just seeing a buzz um and yeah and it was just so lovely um in the kind of the um roland's bar as we must call it sponsorship reasons um afterwards where yeah like there were so many kind of like old faces all just happy and delighted It
Mike Dowling
was
Chris
because our key was special. Yeah,
Mike Dowling
it was packed yesterday. Yeah, it was one of the busiest movie helped immensely by the Australians spending lots of money. A lot of money was spent. Yes.
Mike Dowling
But yeah, it was it was absolutely packed. And you were in there yesterday, but it was really, really busy. It's been the busiest it's been for a long while. Again.
Mike Dowling
we both understood why he didn't do it, but Aggie was in the bar and made a point of speaking to a lot of people, which I think affects them coming in, wanting to be seen almost. But yeah, the strikes of the key were even more special because the Sunderland CEO was there yesterday as a guest of one of the sponsors. He was there with his wife and they were standing at the door and I looked and went, been to this before, haven't you? And he went, oh, I have, but I've made her stay to watch this because she won't believe it.
Mike Dowling
I was like, you ain't ever going to be able to do anything like this. And he was like, not a chance. But yeah, so they had Aggie doing it and they had Hayden, he won, well, he won the key, but he didn't get to draw it out and he had to get up in the sparkly red jacket as well. It was just very, very good.
Mike Dowling
I
Chris
was standing near the Australians and they were loving that, absolutely loving it. But I mean, I did warn some of them, I did ask a couple of them, do you know what's going to be happening? And they went, no. And I went, well, you're going to see something.
Chris
You're in for a treat. Anywhere else.
Mike Dowling
Yeah. From my chats to them at various stages of soberness, I think they will definitely be coming back again because they've absolutely loved it. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Dowling
Do you know what? Before the up next, I've just thought there's something that should have been under the club news that I didn't put under the club news and I intended to, but the return of Frances.
Speaker 3
Oh
Mike Dowling
yes. How good is that to see her out? I mean, she obviously I'm glad we won because then I did start putting the idea in her head that we were winning because she wasn't there. But how good was that to see you there?
Mike Dowling
And she was chatting, so many people chatting to her. In fact, Gary come and said hello to me. I went, oh, Gary, this is Francis and I didn't see him again for another 15 minutes. Ignoring you now.
Mike Dowling
But yeah, delighted to see you back, Francis. Amazing. Yeah. One
Chris
other thing actually, well not so much a club news, but as an observation, I was having a chat with Tats, our CEO, our relatively new CEO, and I sort of asked him, hang on, have we lost yet under your tenure? And he went, no, no. So he's unbeaten as CEO.
Andy
Did you recognize him when he was wearing trousers? You
Mike Dowling
know what? We could be in the Premier League if he had a pound for every time people made that comment to him. We'd be rich. He should do that.
Mike Dowling
He should carry a little tin round. When someone says it, he goes, pound. That's
Chris
it. Funny enough, because I have seen him in Nonsuch Park a few times. So I have seen him in non-shorts. So yeah.
Chris
So yes, so when he's out walking dog or dogs,
Andy
I used to actually before he retired from his for his job, I used to get the train up with him to London for work. And yeah, yeah, always. It still took me five minutes in the morning to realize it was him because he was wearing trousers.
Mike Dowling
That looks
Andy
like tats, it
Mike Dowling
can't be that. So a couple of games ago, we were on here and I sort of said, right, here's the next four games where we're
Andy
going to
Mike Dowling
get a maximum of 12 points. I was constantly going, oh, well, how many will we get? How many will we be happy with? And confidently was saying, well, we should at least get seven.
Mike Dowling
And we're on four of that already. We've got two to go. So Truro, as we've mentioned, they're
Andy
now in
Mike Dowling
the league. Their home record's pretty reasonable. It's not the worst. I'm not saying it's a good home record, but it's not the worst.
Mike Dowling
And we haven't yet won away.
Chris
Yeah.
Mike Dowling
Is that going to be a good time to do that? Andy, what do you think? Is it going to be a good time to
Andy
Yeah, I mean, if you look at their home form, oddly enough, the two teams they've beaten up in their last two opponents, Halifax, they beat them 2-1 and Morecambe, they beat 5-0, which is strange. But, you know, but I mean, they've lost so easily at home, for example. They've drawn with Aldershot at home. It's an opportunity for us.
Andy
It's a real opportunity for us. I will be disappointed if we don't come away with a point at least. And again, that will just kind of shoehorn more space between us and the bottom four. So I'm quite confident.
Andy
I will be there looking at the new Truro City Stadium for my sins. But yeah, we'll see what happens.
Chris
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm going down. I don't often do away fixtures, but because I spent my teenage years in Plymouth, so I will take the opportunity to spend some time with my mum, who is, despite my various overtures, she is not going to be coming to Truro, as things currently stand. Because she
Mike Dowling
doesn't like
Chris
the goalkeeper kit, isn't
Mike Dowling
it? What was I gonna say? I can't remember now. Oh yeah, I saw someone talking about how great the Truro attendance is.
Mike Dowling
Isn't it amazing they've got such a good attendance this year? And I'm like, but they've just come up, they've got a new stadium. I know a load of people going to that game to get the ticks. So there's a load of people going, oh no, I wanna get that one.
Mike Dowling
So it's like, okay, it's maybe a bit falsified, isn't it?
Chris
Well, I don't know. I mean, there is- And
Mike Dowling
it's an away day. Everyone's gonna do the whole weekend, aren't they? Yeah,
Chris
but but I mean, all the. I mean, I don't I haven't analysed it, so I don't know whether they are having particularly large away things as opposed to home. But but like speaking as someone who has spent quite a bit of time in that general part of the world, I mean they are deprived of kind of of like professional sport really in Cornwall apart from the rugby and and Argyle or Plymouth Argyle as I must say to folks from outside of the peninsula.
Chris
Yeah. OK, sure. Lots of Cornish people support Argyll, but they would much rather not have to go all the way across Cornwall to go to the delights of Plymouth. So, yeah, I can understand why they're getting large attendances.
Chris
And Cornwall gets behind its sport. If Cornwall qualify for the County Rugby Championships, if they qualify for Twickenham, it's always big news. uh so yeah yeah i i am not i'm not surprised anyway sorry
Mike Dowling
i was just oh that must be a reason obviously it's not yes um shock mike talking bullshit um
Chris
i mean sure there's also the appeal of kind
Mike Dowling
of like it's fine to go
Chris
to the capital of cornwall uh and uh and i i always i Yeah it always puts a spring in my step because I am of Cornish stock and sort of like seeing signs in both languages and everything which is not something that when I was a youth that you would see in Cornwall and I just love it. I'm just looking forward to it so much. It's just a shame that the public transport links are such that from my mum's in Plymouth it will take me two hours each way Well,
Mike Dowling
AI has gone for a 2-2 draw. Yes. Simple to score.
Chris
Okay.
Mike Dowling
Yeah. I've gone for solid 3-0. Yes. Full of confidence.
Chris
Which AI are you
Mike Dowling
using? I used Gemini, which we're going to come on. We'll come on to your AI in two seconds. Andy, have you got a prediction for the Truro game?
Andy
You know me, how much I love doing predictions. But I will always kind of look at the football web page's prediction. And they predict that Truro are going to beat us 1-0.
Mike Dowling
They're wrong.
Andy
I don't think that's going to happen. They
Mike Dowling
also
Andy
predict
Mike Dowling
that we're going to finish 18th, and Truro are going to finish 14th, 15th.
Andy
Really? Yeah. I think they put too much emphasis on Truro's home form.
Mike Dowling
Yeah. But anyway, it's fine. That's why I don't believe it. Chris, what's your prediction?
Chris
I think… OK, I'll go with Hart. 2-0 to us. Excellent.
Mike Dowling
Lovely. Also, I mean, the other game to finish off the month is Gateshead. So I said really loftily, by the time we play Gateshead, we could be level on points with them. And yeah, we still could be.
Mike Dowling
And then suddenly go above them and start putting ground between us and the bottom four and
Andy
dragging back the
Mike Dowling
teams ahead. Obviously, that was with my whole, yeah, we're going to win the playoffs. kind of
Andy
hat on
Mike Dowling
and just like, oh my god, it's happening. So that's another one. But yeah, Chris did a little experiment last week and he asked his AIs to talk about what's going to happen in the Halifax match. Yeah.
Mike Dowling
Chris, go on, give us a little overview of what it said and how it worked out.
Chris
Yeah, so, so I asked ChapGPT, Gemini and Copilot to give some kind of tactical analysis of like what the tactics that we should use. So this was slightly inspired by an episode of, I think it was, I think it was the Sports Agents, where they were talking about how Reading have a head of AI and that various clubs are now using or should be thinking of using AI and I actually had a chat with a couple of people at Sutton about it. ChatGBT thought that we would lose 1-2 or 2-1 rather, whereas the others thought it was 2-1 and they were saying that we would have a good chance and that because of Halifax's poor form away and that we would just need to concentrate on set pieces and we would
Chris
just need to kind of like press them. And I then asked one of them to generally sum up what all the three AIs had said, and it seemed that Gemini came out on top. However, the one that I asked to do the summary was Gemini. But yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, I am not, as regular listeners may notice, I am not a particularly tactical, astute reader of the game, but yeah, it seemed, well, certainly we won, but yeah, I mean, we were definitely concentrating on them set pieces and trying to
Chris
make sure that we held on to the ball.
Mike Dowling
Yeah, what do you think? Well, there was one bit that it was like something we'll need to concentrate defensively and press for goals and I was like, Yeah, I mean, you're not wrong, let's be honest. It was one of those, that sounds very much like a mic bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Dowling
But yeah, no, it is interesting. And the thing is, while I was saying, I think someone brought it up in our little group, I said, there are these different AIs, and a lot of them, like the chat GPT and the Gemini, they're basically, they're not real AI, they're language models, and their answers tend to be from whatever text there is out in the world, they don't actually do an awful lot of proper thinking. But there is so much AI out there now that is very expensive that can do the thinking and the planning for you.
Mike Dowling
I mean perplexity now has a thing where you can use it in your browser and you can ask it to get information from various websites that you go to. So yeah, some of it's great. amazing and some of it's quite scary to be honest. But they all assure me they're not part of Skynet and they're not going to take over the world.
Mike Dowling
They've all promised very very carefully. Yes.
Andy
They
Mike Dowling
promised they were. Right we're gonna wrap this up and thank you for listening. As always we appreciate everyone's attention and yeah give us any feedback, like, follow, share this episode at something podcast on all socials. A big special thank you to my guests, Andy and to Chris.
Mike Dowling
Thank you to our sponsors, Lucky Star Gin, and we are back. Well, hopefully we're gonna have another little midweek one with some of the kids, the young'uns from the Amber Project, and also the guy who organized the Aussies to come down, and hopefully we'll get them on during the week. But if not, definitely back after the tour match. Take care, and we will catch up soon.
Mike Dowling
Bye-bye. Bye!
Share this post