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First manager I remember was Steve Burtenshaw, followed by Len Ashurst but for me it was Jack that really started to get the club moving again. He said he would only stay 5 years and I was gutted when. Stuck to that and left. I remember not really knowing who Wilkinson was and being a bit disappointed but he took us to a level I am not sure Jack would have achieved.
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Difference was back when Jack came we simply had no money, when MM took over we had 30m of debt. The club was heading to division 4 before Jack, we were heading for liquidation before MM. Both would be in a SWFC Hall of Fame if one existed!!
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12-10-2015, 14:04
(This post was last modified: 12-10-2015, 14:05 by Jacko The Flopsy Piglet.)
My Dad always credits Ashurst with stopping the downward spiral but it took a big personality, not to mention great manager, like Charlton to get us moving upward again. I think rating managers by their style of football can sometime be mis-leading. When you are winning you tend to overlook the flaws of whatever system you're playing at the time. Once a manager / team hits a bad spot their football style is quite often given the blame and called dire / terrible to watch. I've see great games / performances under most of our managers and I've also seen terrible matches under them all too.
You know nothing, Jacko
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i was chatting with Terry Curran at the Preston match (very personable & friendly bloke) and naturally we got talking about Big Jack. Curran said that he was a top manager and I said that he didn't do much for the first two years at S6. Curran said, "I'm not being big headed but it turned around when I joined. I turned an average Div Three team into a promotion side." He was deadly serious and he was probably right because we never looked like getting promoted until the BDM. From that day forward, we had that belief. We discussed other games from that season and TC believed that we should have won every match.
For me, Wilko was the best Manager because he got the most out of the least. You look at his signings and they were waifs & strays that no-one else wanted (Madden, Chapman, Marwood, Cunningham, Worthington, Shutt, Blair & Varadi. Obviously the signing of Hirst was a master stroke although Wilko had left before he hit his peak.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
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I would have to agree with Curran!! He was a game changer that had skills that were out of place in Division 3, he would do nothing some games but then pop up with a killer pass or goal out of nowhere and we would be up and rolling!! The Blunts had a similar quality player in Sabella but he never adapted to playing in the Third division for whatever reason and never had the impact that TC had for us.
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He could have just waited a couple of minutes!!!!
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