All together Now
Taunton Town vs Parkway | Match PreviewBy Stuart James
HE may not don the cap, or wear a badge that states he is interim manager, but Stuart Dudley’s message to all at Plymouth Parkway is simple, as he attempts to lure the club out of the Southern League Premier Division relegation zone: ‘We are all in this together.’
The long-serving stalwart of Bolitho Park was asked to take things on following the dismissal of Chris McPhee at the start of the week and following Saturday’s disappointing 2-1 home defeat to Hungerford Town, which left the club second from bottom of the table and four points from safety.
Dudley’s first assignment is a big one too with the Yellows travelling to relegation rivals Taunton Town tomorrow, and he has called on everyone to pull together to achieve their only real target between now and the end of the season: survival.
“That’s been the message to the players this week,” Dudley said ahead of the trip to Wordsworth Drive. “There’s no magic wand.
“It doesn’t matter if you get Jose Mourinho here, or Pep Guardiola here, there’s no magic wand. There is no formula that’s just going to go ‘click’ and that’s going to change everything because that’s not the situation we’re in.
“Everyone’s got to absolutely be in it together, as you say, and the main message really has been around being connected with each other, having your mates’ back, and if they make a mistake, you make up for it.
“I think, if we can just have another five-per-cent of absolute commitment from everybody – to each other and to the cause, to club and to fans – I think we’re not very far away and hopefully that will be enough to just tip us into where we need to be in terms of gathering up the points we need.”
McPhee’s departure came less than two years after he succeeded Lee Hobbs in the Bolitho hotseat, but in Dudley, chairman Mark Russell and the rest of the Parkway committee have turned to someone they know and trust to carry the baton before another Parkway favourite, Karl Curtis, takes on the role permanently in the summer.
“I’ve been at this club over a number of years in different roles and went away and came back and I’ve had some tough periods in my own personal life,” Dudley said. “This club has always been there for me, so I feel like it’s an absolute no-brainer for me just to say: ‘Yes Mark, yes Gez (Baggott), I’ll come and do that for you because the amount of times that I’ve being fairly low and people around here have picked me up.’
“I just feel like there’s an opportunity for me to maybe give a little bit of that back and, like I said, there’s no magic wand, it’s not necessarily a mission impossible, but it’s mission difficult, that’s for sure. But there’s no doubt that I’ll be giving everything I can to try and get us to where we need to be and hopefully that is enough and because the future is really bright for this football club.”
Any new manager will bring their own thoughts and ideas to the team and Dudley is no different. “Lee (Peacock) and I have taken a view that we’re going to try and give them a little bit of freedom around making choices, making decisions around some of the things that we want to achieve on the pitch,” he said. “I think they’ll appreciate that and that’s been some of feedback that we’ve interacted with so far.
“We do want to make sure that people are as prepared as they can be and we’re doing everything we can to move that along. There was a really nice comment at the end of the conversation where the announcement was made: ‘Come on boys, we’re all playing for contracts, we want to be here next season, let’s give it everything we’ve got.’ So, for me, that’s the attitude that we need and that is the approach that everyone’s going to need to buy into and take, so fingers crossed.”
Parkway Partners
