Shama Deadman’s second season at Cambrian & Clydach has not been the resounding success he hoped it would. With the Cam Army struggling to get results at home, Shama has abandoned his Terry Venables-inspired ‘Christmas tree’ system – and instead resorted to route-one tactics.
In Part 7, Cambrian had a strong run of mid-season results and were looking good for the Cymru South title – that was until Pontypridd paid them a visit. In today’s chapter, Shama must pick up the pieces and rebuild his team’s confidence to keep them in the promotion hunt.
Can they finish the 2021/2022 season on a high? Let’s find out…
MARCH 2022
If I am managing in the Cymru Premier next season, it won’t be with Connah’s Quay. After applying for the job and having an interview with the Nomads chairman, they decided I just wasn’t the right fit to lead them to a title challenge.
I was disappointed, sure, but I wasn’t too disheartened. With seven matches left to go in the Cymru South, my Cambrian & Clydach team were only four points off the top spot, which would yield promotion to the top flight. Despite our shocker against Pontypridd in February, we were still confident that we could push on in the run-in.
So… what could possibly go wrong?
Quite a bit, actually.
Firstly, we only managed a goalless home draw against Stan Lee’s favourite Welsh soccer team – relegation-threatened Abertillery Excelsior. We fought tooth and nail to try and break down their defences, without success. Indeed, Abertillery even scored a last-minute counter-attack, but the offside flag spared us the ultimate embarrassment.
Our next match was also a draw, away to our promotion rivals Swansea University. Things looked good for us when recent signing Llyr Morris flicked in an 8th-minute opener from Liam Edwards‘ right-wing cross. Swansea fought back early in the second half to lead 2-1, but Edwards saved us a point with another assist, delivering an excellent corner for Regan Fear to head home.
The following week, we faced Carmarthen – another team fighting against the drop. Edwards fired us into the lead early in the second half, after Sainty had a penalty saved on the stroke of half-time. That put us on course for a rare home win… until the visitors hammered in a long-range equaliser two minutes from the end.
Ton Pentre were also battling relegation, but they started brightly in the Rhondda derby, when Jake Nicholls gave away a 15th-minute penalty which they converted. That fired Jamie Wilson up, as the 17-year-old equalised from a cross by Harry Blake before scoring a direct free-kick to put us ahead.
The derby was effectively settled just before half-time, when Ton Pentre had one of their defenders sent off following a second booking. The Bulldogs’ barks were much worse than their bites in the second half, and so we returned to winning ways on the road.
We’d taken six points from our four matches in March, but it was the half-dozen points we dropped that looked more important. Because of all those draws, we basically had to win our final three matches to have any hope of going up – and even then, we needed both Llanelli Town and Haverfordwest to falter.
APRIL 2022
We had another decent-looking youth intake, with a handful of prospects in defensive positions. I’m not sure why there’s a Macedonian striker named Mark Jones, but here are a couple of players whose names might become more familiar to Cambrian fans over the coming years.
I have to be very careful spelling his name, but Furkan Şentürk is an agile young goalkeeper with decent scores in all the key attributes. I actually think he might be a decent backup to our number 1 Harry Churchill next season, with Neil Collins set to retire.
We also have a fine talent in one of our traditional problem positions. Left-back Scott Chambers might still have a lot of technical development to go through, but he scores highly on Teamwork and Work Rate, which is good enough for me!
Our slim promotion hopes effectively died against Briton Ferry, who took the lead three times, only for us to respond with three equalisers. Though Morris didn’t score against his former club, his strike partner Wilson did find the net, in between an impressive double from Edwards. If only we hadn’t been quite so leaky at the other end!
Another frustrating home draw left us out of the title race, with only a top-four finish to aim for. Thankfully, we managed to wrap that up against Ammanford. Sainty scored a scrappy opener on the stroke of half-time, and we defended our lead bravely before Wilson doubled it towards the end.
After recording just our fifth home win of the league season, we knew that we needed only a draw at title-chasing Llanelli Town to finish 3rd. Were we to lose, Swansea University had the chance to overtake us by winning their final game at Ammanford.
Unsurprisingly, we lost 1-0 – our fourth such defeat to Llanelli in the past two years. The Reds absolutely dominated from start to finish, though it took them nearly an hour to break the deadlock. Frankly, all our players (except maybe Churchill and Nicholls) looked like they weren’t concentrating at all – and neither were our fans, for that matter!
What red card, Blake? There wasn’t a red card! Unless my name’s Chris Kamara and I missed it!
Swansea did win their final game, which meant they took 3rd place at our expense. That said, we couldn’t be too disappointed with 4th, which was our joint-highest finish in this division.
We also picked up three more points than last season, improved our goal difference by three, and suffered the fewest defeats in the division. If we hadn’t drawn quite so often, Cambrian might have been in the Cymru Premier next term.
2021/2022 SEASON REVIEW
My second season at Cambrian has been one of steady progression, but also of missed opportunities. The board were always going to be satisfied with another top-half finish, especially after we were stuck in mid-table for the first third of the campaign.
We got to Round 3 of both cups before enduring frustrating exits. In the League Cup, we were taken to an epic 26-kick penalty shoot-out at Goytre United, where Churchill and Sainty made costly misses as we lost 12-11. Haverfordwest eliminated us from the Welsh Cup less dramatically, blowing us away in the first half after I screwed up my tactical plans.
In terms of finances, we’re currently spending just under our £1,370 weekly wage budget. In fact, we now have the largest wage bill in the division, which might explain why we’re now £50,000 in debt. While our financial situation isn’t quite as bad as some of our rivals’, we may need to spend more responsibly next term.
That might mean reluctantly selling Edwards, who’s on £250 per week. While Liam has had another very impressive season, that is still a lot of money to pay one player in this division (our next best-paid player is Simon Heslop on £90 per week, who has frankly been mediocre). With that in mind, we may have to cash in on him this summer rather than risk losing him for free next year.
| Fans’ Player of the Season | Liam Edwards |
| Young Player of the Season | Liam Edwards |
| Signing of the Season | Marcus Snell |
| Goal of the Season | Christopher Williams (vs Llantwit Major, 12 February) |
| Top Goalscorer | Jamie Wilson (24) |
| Most Assists | Liam Edwards (14) |
| Most Player of the Match Awards | Liam Edwards (8) |
| Highest Average Rating | Liam Edwards (7.20) |
Edwards stole the headlines for us once again, retaining his Fans’ Player of the Season award. That’s no surprise, seeing as he is rated as a “good player for most Cymru Premier sides” and a “consistent performer” by my assistant.
Liam fell one short of repeating his 25 goal contributions from last season, as although his goalscoring dropped off, he made up for that with more assists. Having played him in attacking midfield for most of last season, he’s featured mainly on the right wing since I abandoned the ‘Christmas tree’ tactic. However, he’s been most effective as a pressing forward, getting 3 goals and 7 assists in just nine matches up front.
He has certainly struck up an effective partnership with Wilson, setting up several of the teenager’s 24 goals this season. Though Jamie isn’t the quickest or most intelligent poacher, he is certainly a composed and consistent finisher, scoring from 27% of his total shots. Just to remind you, he is 17 years old.
Wilson’s 21 goals put him joint-4th in the Cymru South goalscoring charts. Morris came 3rd, having added three more goals with us to the 20 he got at Briton Ferry. Those two will surely be serious contenders for next year’s Golden Boot (which, being in a semi-pro league, is probably just an old Diadora Brasil that’s been spray-painted gold).
Whereas we were arguably a one-man team last season, we’ve now become hugely dependent on two men (albeit one of them is still technically a child). Edwards and Wilson were our only regular players to record an average rating of 7.00+, the only two to score more than three goals, and the only outfielders to win multiple ‘player of the match’ awards.
Of course, an average rating below 7 doesn’t make a player rubbish. I’m still very happy with Churchill’s performances in goal and Jarrad Wright‘s in defence, while Sainty has been a useful ball-winner in midfield for us. I probably expected a bit more from our new full-backs, along with Kyle Jones and Heslop in midfield, but I suspect the ratings algorithm might be a bit wonky when it comes to those positions.
At any rate, we’re certainly more defensively solid now – or at least we were in the first half of the season, when we let in only 12 goals in 15 league games. We then conceded 24 in our next 15 matches, but that included our 8-1 thrashing by Pontypridd. If you disregard that one-off shocker, no other team in our division would’ve had a better defensive record.
If there’s something we definitely need to improve, though, it’s our home form. While we had the joint-best away record, we only ranked 7th on home results. Only Haverfordwest and Pontypridd beat us at the M&P Group 3G, but another eight teams came away with draws as we won just FIVE home league games.
I’ve got a theory on where we’re going wrong. While the direct counter-attacking tactics were very effective on the road, they weren’t so useful on our narrow pitch, where play often got congested and our wide players struggled to find space. I’d set the pitch size while I was still using the Christmas tree, but since we’ve now changed tactics, I will ask the groundsman to widen it over the summer.
PLAYER-BY PLAYER STATISTICS
FROM CLYDACH TO CLYDE?
I began studying for my National B Licence at the start of December, and completed it exactly four months later. When I first heard the news, I thought it was an April Fool’s joke… but then I realised that it didn’t come with a mysterious £500million windfall.
After nearly two years of development and education in south Wales, my attributes are starting to look like they belong to a proper football manager. My defensive coaching has already jumped from 1 to 7, and nearly all my other attributes have increased. The only ones that haven’t are Goalkeeper Distribution and Handling (meh) and Adaptability (which never changes).
But have I gone as far as I can with Cambrian? I looked around the job centre for any attractive openings elsewhere in Europe, but the only one that caught my eye was in Scotland.
Clyde were an underperforming League Two club who had missed out on the play-offs, after being relegated from League One 12 months earlier. Expectations were high at the Broadwood Stadium, but with a solid infrastructure and an experienced team, the Bully Wee looked well-placed to rise up the leagues again with the right manager.
I applied for the job on 5 May and awaited their response. A week went by… then another… and then another… and then I started to wonder if my CV got lost in the post. I knew I should’ve sent an email instead!
Anyway, on 2 June (28 days later), Clyde’s chairman finally got back to me.
Laughable! They take FOUR WEEKS to reply, and then they chuck my application in the bin because I’ve “never guided teams away from relegation”! Erm… I think finishing 26 points clear of the drop should tell them all they need to know!
Clyde would’ve been a step up from Cambrian, but if that’s their approach to finding a new boss, I’m GLAD they didn’t give me the job!
Anyway, I’m not that desperate to leave the Cam Army just yet. I’m contracted here for another year, and I believe next season might be our season. I’m going to give it one more shot at promotion – all or nothing.
So, no promotion for Cambrian this season, but Shama is sticking around for at least one more!
The 2022/2023 season will begin with Part 9 next Monday, when the manager reveals the new-look team that he hopes will finally lead the Cam Army into the Cymru Premier!
Thanks for reading!
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