Sometimes he talks about the Football – September
They say a week is a long time in football.
In which case, a month must be a full-blown saga. September came complete with plot twists, heartbreak, and the hint of things to come.
For Willand, the month of September was one to be forgotten… and yet somehow one we should never forget.
Don’t worry, I’ll explain.
When I started following Crewe in the late 1980s, there wasn’t really a reason that I remember. I tell myself now that it was a teenage rebellion against supporting the big clubs that dominated the limited airwaves (remember that 95% of the football we saw was Match of the Day). Back then it was Liverpool and Manchester red, interspersed with Villa claret and Birmingham blue that I saw on the streets.
My naturally morose demeanour didn’t sit well with a lifetime of winning, so I decided to pick the antithesis. One Sunday morning, sometime in the late 1980s, I picked up the Daily Mail and scanned through the leagues until I reached the foot of the page.
92nd and dead last — Crewe Alexandra.
I’d honestly never heard of them before, but one quick check with a road atlas later and it was settled: I was a Crewe supporter.
It may have been a lucky escape.
Looking today at the league tables from 1986 and 1987, Division 4 was a conspiracy of Premiership wannabes, Non-League stalwarts, and Devon-based teams that would have been much more convenient given my later life decision.
Perennial Premier plotters Wolves, Burnley, and Cardiff were all plying their trade in the lower echelons of the league structure. It’s hard to imagine today, but as we were suffering through the embers of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure in Downing Street, fans who now flirt with corporate boxes, European adventures and VAR decisions used to contend with cold Tuesday nights in Hartlepool.
The Monkey Hangers themselves fall into the altogether less desirable category of teams that have dropped below the formal 92. They are joined in this select and slightly unkempt group by clubs including Scunthorpe, Rochdale and Hereford, among others. Some would tumble, some would rebirth, and all would collect enough motorway miles to qualify for a loyalty card at every service station from Tebay to Thurrock.
And finally, there are those teams local to where I finally ended up: Exeter City and Torquay United, sensible Devon options sat temptingly close to future postcodes. A trick missed perhaps.
But on that day and in that year, it was the Railwaymen who languished as the 92nd-best football team covered by Fleet Street. Since then the club has been surprisingly promoted, inevitably relegated, and have even won silverware at Wembley — so, all in all, not a bad stroke of luck.
Back to the late 1980s, as I prowled the mean streets of South Warwickshire, my immediate problem was that I didn’t know anything about the team I’d decided to support. Not only was Twitter still 20 years away from being invented, we still had to wait until the turn of the decade for the first web page to be published. So my fledgling associations with the club came from Sunday morning reports: brief interludes that covered nothing but the essentials, a minimalist necessity against the backdrop of shared space with Division One luminaries. It’s among these back pages that I learned the names of Shaun Smith, Kenny Lunt and Mark Rivers. But one name stood out among the other transient stars.
Dario Gradi.
They say you can’t rebuild a club on tea, cones and courage. Dario Gradi turned up in 1983 and more or less did exactly that. The football got cleaner, the touch got softer, and the academy became a conveyor belt you could set your watch by. Players such as David Platt, Danny Murphy, Neil Lennon, Robbie Savage, Seth Johnson, Dean Ashton and others either came through or were polished under his watch. Promotions followed, and then that spring day at Wembley in ’97 and a seat at the grown-ups’ table. Crewe, who used to tiptoe around the trapdoor, suddenly had a style, a schooling, and sell-on clauses paying the electric.
In 2007 he moved upstairs to the grandiose title of technical director — it didn’t last. He returned as caretaker in 2008, again in 2009, and then managed until November 2011, when he stepped down. He managed for a total of 1,359 games and remained an active part of the club until retiring from all positions in October 2019.
And yet the legacy sits in a complicated filing cabinet. From 2016 onward, safeguarding investigations changed the lighting; the Sheldon Report (2021) put survivors at the centre and set out failures and missed chances to protect children. That should be the beginning of any honest telling. In the aftermath, Gradi was placed under safeguarding restrictions that removed him from football activity, and in 2023 the honours board lost a plaque. For those affected, the only meaningful measures are safeguarding, apology and redress, not win–loss columns or career stats.
But you can’t tell the story of Crewe without telling the story of Dario Gradi. For over 35 years he essentially was Crewe Alexandra. Equally, that story now rightly has margins written by survivors, asterisks of accountability, and a duty of care that has to come first.
For Willand, the start of September couldn’t have been worse than the end of August — or so the theory went. With the echoes of the 8–0 defeat to Hartpury still resonating through both the team and the ground, the first chance at redemption came against perennial FA Trophy opponents Bishops Cleeve in the First Qualifying Round. In a game that I’ve already forgotten (imagine my surprise when I realised I’d done the match report!), Willand somehow, inevitably, went behind before managing to fire in a Cunningham equaliser to level the tie. As is the way with modern cup games, extra time stepped aside for a penalty shoot-out, and the opportunity for redemption was soon extinguished from 12 yards.
But as I (apparently) wrote at the time: “Defeat on penalties will sting, but there were positives to take. After the chaos of August, this felt closer to order.”
Turns out, not so much.
Bashley at home doesn’t suggest the season’s most memorable game, and to be fair it was a torrid affair to watch. A 93rd-minute penalty condemned the Whites to defeat, but in months and years the game will be forgotten and the penalty no longer talked about. But it will still be one of the most significant days in the history of Willand Football Club.
After the game, news came out that David Steele had stepped down as first-team manager. David has had a 27-year association with Willand Rovers. After a long and distinguished playing career, in which he remains the club’s all-time leading goalscorer, David served as assistant manager during the promotion to the Southern Football League six years ago, before taking charge as manager in 2022. I had the pleasure of talking to David on several occasions and he always came across as candid, knowledgeable and, more than anything, passionate about Willand Rovers Football Club.
To paraphrase chairman Mike Hawkins: everyone at Willand Rovers thanks David for his immense contribution over nearly three decades and wishes him every success for the future.
As the search for a new manager began, Liam and Jamie Richards took the helm for Willand’s next match, a visit from fellow Devon side Exmouth in the Devon St Lukes Bowl (not a cup). In truth it didn’t start well and Willand were quickly two goals behind to what looked like a much better team.
Things changed in the second half with the belated arrival of the infamous “new-manager bounce”, and a brace from Shepperd sent the game the same way as the previous cup game. Penalties.
Unfortunately this is not where the similarities ended and Willand once again experienced the bitter taste of penalty defeat. But in the second half they also experienced something else, much more important. Hope.
The new manager’s bounce continued to the following game, another Devon derby away to Tavistock where goals from Shepherd and Herbert in quick succession gave the debutant management team their first win.
Unfortunately, the bounce flattened around the 42nd minute of the last game of the month, an away trip to Shaftesbury. Despite taking the lead with a Kempster double, it was the Rockies who came away victorious, scoring late in both halves to send the travelling Willand fans home with nothing but reflection.
In the end September didn’t just happen to Willand – it edited us.
Much as you can’t tell the story of Crewe without talking about Dario Gradi, you can’t tell Willand’s without David Steele front and centre.
But as the calendar flips to October, a new manager takes the helm and we go again.
The next chapter is ready to be written.
