So its finally over. After 67 seasons and 2663 games in the Isthmian League we have been relegated to the county leagues at step 5 of the football pyramid. For a team that was once amongst the top 10 non league clubs in the country with a couple of football league scalps in the FA Cup under the belt, this represents a disastrous fall down the leagues.
From my personal point of view, I have been watching Tooting for 49 of those seasons. And there are plenty of fans who have been going longer than that. I have had various voluntary roles in that time from groundsman to match reports to social media to website work – and other times just as a supporter behind the goal. Its not just relegation though. Virtually every team in the country has a relegation from time to time – its part of the supporter’s experience to suffer every now and again. It does make successes taste all the sweeter. In fact, in my time we have gone down four times previously but there just wasn’t the same sense of despair from the terraces as we are experiencing this season.
This drop seems so much worse. Apart from leaving the league that we have been members of since Elvis first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, this relegation has been signposted to us (well, the fans at least) for two years. And again, from the fans’ perspective, we have just been sleepwalking towards the precipice – seemingly without taking any action until a few weeks ago when I’m afraid it was too late. Its all the more frustrating for the rank and file supporter as this season hasn’t come out of the blue. After the brilliant week in May 2021 when we won the semi final and final of the London Senior Cup in amazing circumstances its just been flop after flop starting with the FA Cup defeat to Erith & Belvedere from the division below us.
It became clear to the manager that some of our more senior players weren’t performing so players like Jelley, Coleman and Wedgeworth were released. But the trouble was that we didn’t replace them. At least not with equal or better players. And that is the ongoing theme that has led us to this point. Admittedly there were some things that were probably out of the manager’s hands such as the departure of top scorer Danny Williams and the long term unavailability of the likes of Ahkeem Belford and Jake Rose.
However, these are issues that all managers face at our level and they have to be dealt with. But by and large, none of the players who came in last season performed to the required level. All 59 of them. And I don’t blame the players. I presume they gave their best and worked their hardest. But if the quality isn’t there, it isn’t there. And selecting the right players is the manager’s job.
Now, as I’ve said earlier, I can take relegations as part of football supporting. I can take bad seasons. It comes with the territory. A look at the final 2021/2022 table shows we escaped relegation by 13 points. The reality was that we were in serious danger of going down until the last couple of games – and part of that was down to a few clubs folding and a number of Step 5 clubs not meeting the requirements for promotion. We were lucky. It was the worst season in our 90 year history. We had the warning – and it needed to be heeded.
Over the summer we lost the services of our best player – Mark Waters and a long term stalwart – Dean Hamlin. But in my opinion we failed to replace these players with equal or better. In fact our whole summer player acquisition filled me with trepidation. As far as I could see it looked like we had signed either untried players and our level or youngsters with some potential.
In the SLiB&W “Spaces” meeting in pre season I expressed my worries. And I suggested that we would be in the bottom 6 all season. I wasn’t prepared to be so wrong. And I know you can’t normally read too much into pre season games but our results and performances were pretty bad. But we were comforted by various players who were kind enough to engage with supporters at that time.
But things didn’t improve. And 9 games later we were in the relegation zone. And out of all the cups. I think it was about now that Ashley Bosah’s credit ran out amongst a lot of fans. Me included. Now, I am not a “sacker”. I have very rarely campaigned for a manager to be sacked. I stuck with Frank Wilson in our relegation season and I even backed The Magician in his short stay in the “season of 3 managers”. But I felt that the manager has shown himself unable to sign good players. When I say good players – of course most of our players are good – I mean players with a proven track record in step 4 and step 3.
This is a season where there are 4 relegation places. The bottom 2 are relegated automatically whereas the next 2 have a safety net of a playoff. After 9 games we were in the bottom 4. We started slipping further and further from safety – but there were still 2 teams adrift at the bottom – Guernsey and Merstham. So although in an awful position we still looked like we would still be in a playoff to save our season. But January saw us lose our 1st 6 games of the year and plummet to the bottom. But we still had a game in hand and still had to play a couple of the rubbish teams. But we couldn’t beat them either. Suddenly we were bottom by more than 3 points. We needed a win from somewhere.
It was early February when the club acted at long last. But I’m afraid it was a fudge.
We brought in Andy Hunt – but retained Ashley Bosah to work together as co-managers. Whether the club were actively looking for a new co-manager for a while or whether Ashley Bosah selected the new man - its never been made clear. But with only 15 or 16 games to turn things around I feel the new man was on a hiding to nothing. We desperately needed a lot of new faces, but at the same time, most football people know that you can’t just ship in 11 new players and expect them to perform as a team straight away.
And that is what panned out. Yes, the co-manager brought in a lot of players but with a couple of exceptions they weren’t players who had proved themselves at our level. And of course, with the exception of the surprise win against Binfield, the results didn’t improve. We failed to beat relegation rivals Bedfont Sports and Merstham. We were now 6 or 7 points adrift at the bottom as all of the other relegation candidates were picking up the odd wins and draws whereas we went on another 4 game losing streak.
As March petered out there was an exodus of our most senior and experienced players for unknown reasons. It left us to play 2nd bottom Sutton Common Rovers in really our last chance to get a little boost to maybe set up a Great Escape. But we succumbed to a 5th straight defeat with a bit of a whimper. The mathematics might not have said so yet, but we were gone. With still half a dozen games left to endure. It was eventually the 1-1 draw with Chipstead which finally delivered the coup de grace.
Although you can’t really compare today’s football pyramid with the league structure of yesteryear, the last time we were playing at the 5th level of non league football was in 1909 as Tooting Graveney when we won the Southern Suburban League Division One. Now, in 2023/2024 we are back – probably in the Combined Counties League. What will life be like in that league I don’t know. Crowds will be a lot less, the quality of the players will probably be lower, and the standard of officiating – well lets not go there. Will we come straight back up? Well as far as I can tell, most relegated teams take time to readjust. Some clubs have returned a couple of seasons later but a few have just languished in that league for years – or worse. So I am not confident.
All in all its been an awful couple of years for the club – the worst ever in fact. The whole management structure from the owner down to the team managers have failed badly. And failed to react when the warning signs were flashing large. Failed to react when supporters expressed their worries. Failed to react when the results and the tables were showing very clearly there were problems. The only people who have come out of this relegation with any credit are the supporters and the matchday volunteers who have somehow continued to keep the football club going and supporting the team. And will again next season.
Roger Ramone
Very wise words.
A big Thanks to Roger for sending this in
