There's More To Meir Than Meets The Eye - Feature Article
Thu 2nd March 2023 | Foley Meir | By Jay Cooper
When a new team is promoted to a higher division at any level of the English game, if there’s any bookies’ odds on who the favourites for relegation are, you can bet that the newly-promotes will be high on that list. To be fair, that method of thinking is not totally unjustified, and in the NWCFL First Division South, it could well have applied to Rocester in the 2021/22 season, but the Romans were awarded a reprieve from the drop after finishing comfortably above bottom side St Martins.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, there’s a team in the same division during this 2022/23 season who are hoping to ensure that they receive the same treatment as Rocester did, and that team is Foley Meir. The Stoke-based side are second bottom after 30 games, and 9 points away from the safety net between 17th and 18th in the table. Coincidentally enough, the only team who Foley Meir are looking over their shoulder at are Rocester.
However, to assume that Foley Meir haven’t earned their stripes in non-league and are unable to hang in the NWCFL would be total lunacy. A cursory glance at their club history will tell you that the club are founding members of the Staffordshire County Senior League, which came into existence for the 2005/06 season, and it would only take them 3 further years to be crowned champions of the Premier Division. This was a feat that they repeated in the 2020/21 season, and they even snuck a Division One win in there in 2016/17.
To those of you wondering why they weren’t promoted off the back of the 2021/22, and why their presences wasn’t felt in the Counties League the season after, remember that there was a certain global pandemic having its fun with non-league football during this time, and the regulations surrounding promotion and relegation at this level essentially went out of the window until the end of the 2021/22 season. And, wouldn’t you know it, right there at the end of that season were Foley Meir, having finished 4th in the league, to be granted admittance into the NWCFL First Division South.
So, they’ve been around the block a few times in non-league since the turn of the century, but there’s another contributor to their successes. Foley Meir FC are one of the many beneficiaries of the Football Foundation’s “Grow the Game” grant scheme, which is funded by the FA and is designed to financially aid clubs with a contribution towards a combination of essential costs, including, but not limited to: facility hire, coaching courses, affiliation fees, league entry fees, and kit/equipment costs.
The Football Foundation donated a generous £6,000 to Foley Meir in 2001 to assists with the club’s establishment of their permanent changing and hospitality facilities – a massive helping hand, and one that didn’t just help the players and officials involved, but also contributed to the overall community feel around the club. I spoke briefly to Foley Meir manager Sam Golden last weekend, and he had nothing but praise for the community around the club.
“It’s good, what we’re building at the club. We‘ve got Friday day sessions for the older people in the community to come down and enjoy the facilities; we’ve started work on the new clubhouse, which is really going to help; there’s a school being built by the ground, and that’s hopefully going to have a 3G pitch, which would be ace for training. It’s a club right at the heart of the community, right in the middle of Meir, and you see people coming in who go ‘oh, I used to play for Foley’ and we can show them that the club is still going, it's going at a high level, and we’re only going to keep improving.”
Golden is currently listed as a player for the club on the NWCFL website, but he has occupied the hotseat since October 2022. In his own words, “I was the assistant at the start of the season, and I stepped down when the manager did, but I changed my mind and applied for the job after that. Obviously, they brought me back in, and it’s a roll I’ve really enjoyed. It’s my first role as a manager in the NWCFL, and I’m enjoying the challenge. I’ve never really been involved with a team down near the bottom of a league, so it’s really been a learning curve for me. But it’s about keeping going, keeping believing in ourselves, and we hope we’re going to turn a corner soon.”
It was last weekend when I spoke to Sam that Foley Meir made the trip north to Greatest Manchester for a league clash with Stockport Georgians. Georgians, like Foley, were promoted to the NWCFL First Division South for the 2022/23 season, but, unlike Foley, they were promoted from the Manchester League system, and they’ve fared slightly better on the field throughout this campaign. Ahead of the weekend’s match, they were sitting comfortably in 6th place, a scant 2 points from creeping into the play-off places.
Perhaps expectedly on paper, the first half saw a fairly dominant display from the hosts, but the key thing that they failed to do throughout the first 45 was test Foley ‘keeper Andrew Walklate, aside from having to command his area and claim a loose ball or two. It would take until the 42nd minute for Georgians’ pressure to pay off, when Finlay Bartram fought his way into the area from the left flank and laid the ball off to captain Joel Atkinson. His left-footed, first-time shot expertly found the top corner.
Walklate found himself a busier man in the second half, being called into action to deny an awkwardly bouncing free kick, again from Atkinson, before he pulled off an unbelievable reaction save to deny a header at the near post from a corner for the hosts. Despite some good hold-up play throughout the second half from Foley’s Jayden Shepherd, Georgians would double their lead with 20 minutes remaining when Kyle Wych drifted in from the right hand side and fired a lovely shot across the face of goal and beyond Walklate into the far corner.
Perhaps unfairly, given that Foley weren’t being totally battered by Georgians’ front line, there would be a 3rd goal to come with less than 5 minutes left. Atkinson bagged his brace by firing on goal from the edge of the area, which drew a good save by Walklate, but it was a forgone conclusion when the ball bounced right back out to the Georgians’ skipper.
The game finished 3-0, which can be a debilitating result for a manager to take at any level, but Golden kept his head up, despite the defeat. “I think we played well in the first half; we were undone with a bit of a defensive mistake on the 42nd minute, and that just deflated us, and then they picked off towards the end of the second half. I still think we played well - the hard work was there, especially considering we’re playing a team pushing for the play-offs. We’re just not getting that slice of luck that we need, being down at the bottom, and unfortunately it’s not gone our way again, but I saw a positive performance out there today.”
It’s so important for players and coaches to do their best to make sure that defeats don’t impact the morale of the team too much for when the next game rolls around. When defeats are often and sometimes a little humiliating, like a 12-0 loss to Cheadle Town, for instance, that Foley have unfortunately been victims of this season, that importance is increased tenfold. Golden recognises this, and he told me that “it has been tough. But, when we’ve been playing against the higher teams, we’ve really been competing. We’ve had a few dodgy results, but there’s been quite a few games we’ve only lost by the odd goal or two. We are scoring a lot, too, and we do make a lot of chances for ourselves, so we’ve just got to keep going.
“it’s our first season that we’ve come into this league, and it’s about trying to stay in this league and build on our foundations for next year. We’ll have an improved budget, we can maybe bring in a few more players and keep building as we go. The focus at the moment is staying in the league, and in terms of keeping the lads upbeat and positive – we are playing relatively OK since we’re down at the bottom, so we just need to start turning these decent performances into goals and points.”
Circling back to last season in the NWCFL, it is absolutely worth remembering that there were only 2 teams that left the entire league system via relegation, and they were St Helens Town and St Martins, both of whom finished rock bottom of the First Divisions North and South respectively. Foley Meir might not have had a stellar debut season in the league, but at no point have they been sitting at the foot of the table throughout this campaign. It’s still up in the air as to whether they will be with us next season or not, but hopefully this article has told you a good story about a positive, optimistic football club, the likes of which we hope to see more of not just in the NWCFL, but in football as a whole.
Image credit: Twitter, @foley_fc, 18/02/2023
There's More To Meir Than Meets The Eye - Feature Article
Thu 2nd March 2023 | Foley Meir
By Jay Cooper
When a new team is promoted to a higher division at any level of the English game, if there’s any bookies’ odds on who the favourites for relegation are, you can bet that the newly-promotes will be high on that list. To be fair, that method of thinking is not totally unjustified, and in the NWCFL First Division South, it could well have applied to Rocester in the 2021/22 season, but the Romans were awarded a reprieve from the drop after finishing comfortably above bottom side St Martins.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, there’s a team in the same division during this 2022/23 season who are hoping to ensure that they receive the same treatment as Rocester did, and that team is Foley Meir. The Stoke-based side are second bottom after 30 games, and 9 points away from the safety net between 17th and 18th in the table. Coincidentally enough, the only team who Foley Meir are looking over their shoulder at are Rocester.
However, to assume that Foley Meir haven’t earned their stripes in non-league and are unable to hang in the NWCFL would be total lunacy. A cursory glance at their club history will tell you that the club are founding members of the Staffordshire County Senior League, which came into existence for the 2005/06 season, and it would only take them 3 further years to be crowned champions of the Premier Division. This was a feat that they repeated in the 2020/21 season, and they even snuck a Division One win in there in 2016/17.
To those of you wondering why they weren’t promoted off the back of the 2021/22, and why their presences wasn’t felt in the Counties League the season after, remember that there was a certain global pandemic having its fun with non-league football during this time, and the regulations surrounding promotion and relegation at this level essentially went out of the window until the end of the 2021/22 season. And, wouldn’t you know it, right there at the end of that season were Foley Meir, having finished 4th in the league, to be granted admittance into the NWCFL First Division South.
So, they’ve been around the block a few times in non-league since the turn of the century, but there’s another contributor to their successes. Foley Meir FC are one of the many beneficiaries of the Football Foundation’s “Grow the Game” grant scheme, which is funded by the FA and is designed to financially aid clubs with a contribution towards a combination of essential costs, including, but not limited to: facility hire, coaching courses, affiliation fees, league entry fees, and kit/equipment costs.
The Football Foundation donated a generous £6,000 to Foley Meir in 2001 to assists with the club’s establishment of their permanent changing and hospitality facilities – a massive helping hand, and one that didn’t just help the players and officials involved, but also contributed to the overall community feel around the club. I spoke briefly to Foley Meir manager Sam Golden last weekend, and he had nothing but praise for the community around the club.
“It’s good, what we’re building at the club. We‘ve got Friday day sessions for the older people in the community to come down and enjoy the facilities; we’ve started work on the new clubhouse, which is really going to help; there’s a school being built by the ground, and that’s hopefully going to have a 3G pitch, which would be ace for training. It’s a club right at the heart of the community, right in the middle of Meir, and you see people coming in who go ‘oh, I used to play for Foley’ and we can show them that the club is still going, it's going at a high level, and we’re only going to keep improving.”
Golden is currently listed as a player for the club on the NWCFL website, but he has occupied the hotseat since October 2022. In his own words, “I was the assistant at the start of the season, and I stepped down when the manager did, but I changed my mind and applied for the job after that. Obviously, they brought me back in, and it’s a roll I’ve really enjoyed. It’s my first role as a manager in the NWCFL, and I’m enjoying the challenge. I’ve never really been involved with a team down near the bottom of a league, so it’s really been a learning curve for me. But it’s about keeping going, keeping believing in ourselves, and we hope we’re going to turn a corner soon.”
It was last weekend when I spoke to Sam that Foley Meir made the trip north to Greatest Manchester for a league clash with Stockport Georgians. Georgians, like Foley, were promoted to the NWCFL First Division South for the 2022/23 season, but, unlike Foley, they were promoted from the Manchester League system, and they’ve fared slightly better on the field throughout this campaign. Ahead of the weekend’s match, they were sitting comfortably in 6th place, a scant 2 points from creeping into the play-off places.
Perhaps expectedly on paper, the first half saw a fairly dominant display from the hosts, but the key thing that they failed to do throughout the first 45 was test Foley ‘keeper Andrew Walklate, aside from having to command his area and claim a loose ball or two. It would take until the 42nd minute for Georgians’ pressure to pay off, when Finlay Bartram fought his way into the area from the left flank and laid the ball off to captain Joel Atkinson. His left-footed, first-time shot expertly found the top corner.
Walklate found himself a busier man in the second half, being called into action to deny an awkwardly bouncing free kick, again from Atkinson, before he pulled off an unbelievable reaction save to deny a header at the near post from a corner for the hosts. Despite some good hold-up play throughout the second half from Foley’s Jayden Shepherd, Georgians would double their lead with 20 minutes remaining when Kyle Wych drifted in from the right hand side and fired a lovely shot across the face of goal and beyond Walklate into the far corner.
Perhaps unfairly, given that Foley weren’t being totally battered by Georgians’ front line, there would be a 3rd goal to come with less than 5 minutes left. Atkinson bagged his brace by firing on goal from the edge of the area, which drew a good save by Walklate, but it was a forgone conclusion when the ball bounced right back out to the Georgians’ skipper.
The game finished 3-0, which can be a debilitating result for a manager to take at any level, but Golden kept his head up, despite the defeat. “I think we played well in the first half; we were undone with a bit of a defensive mistake on the 42nd minute, and that just deflated us, and then they picked off towards the end of the second half. I still think we played well - the hard work was there, especially considering we’re playing a team pushing for the play-offs. We’re just not getting that slice of luck that we need, being down at the bottom, and unfortunately it’s not gone our way again, but I saw a positive performance out there today.”
It’s so important for players and coaches to do their best to make sure that defeats don’t impact the morale of the team too much for when the next game rolls around. When defeats are often and sometimes a little humiliating, like a 12-0 loss to Cheadle Town, for instance, that Foley have unfortunately been victims of this season, that importance is increased tenfold. Golden recognises this, and he told me that “it has been tough. But, when we’ve been playing against the higher teams, we’ve really been competing. We’ve had a few dodgy results, but there’s been quite a few games we’ve only lost by the odd goal or two. We are scoring a lot, too, and we do make a lot of chances for ourselves, so we’ve just got to keep going.
“it’s our first season that we’ve come into this league, and it’s about trying to stay in this league and build on our foundations for next year. We’ll have an improved budget, we can maybe bring in a few more players and keep building as we go. The focus at the moment is staying in the league, and in terms of keeping the lads upbeat and positive – we are playing relatively OK since we’re down at the bottom, so we just need to start turning these decent performances into goals and points.”
Circling back to last season in the NWCFL, it is absolutely worth remembering that there were only 2 teams that left the entire league system via relegation, and they were St Helens Town and St Martins, both of whom finished rock bottom of the First Divisions North and South respectively. Foley Meir might not have had a stellar debut season in the league, but at no point have they been sitting at the foot of the table throughout this campaign. It’s still up in the air as to whether they will be with us next season or not, but hopefully this article has told you a good story about a positive, optimistic football club, the likes of which we hope to see more of not just in the NWCFL, but in football as a whole.
Image credit: Twitter, @foley_fc, 18/02/2023
