Anwar Uddin had to whittle down his squad from more than 100 hopefuls and completely revamp the culture at Mile End-based Sporting Bengal over the summer.
So it is fair to say the former Dagenham & Redbridge defender has been kept occupied in his first managerial job – and he admits competitions like The FA Vase make the effort all the more sweeter.
Uddin won The FA Youth Cup with West Ham United before enjoying a long spell with the Daggers, but the Bengal Tigers are a club that holds a particularly special place in his heart.
Sporting Bengal United v Southall
The FA Vase
First Round Proper
3pm, Saturday 31 October 2015
Mile End Stadium, London
Winners receive £900 from prize fund
By Chris Bailey
Since their formation in 1996, Uddin has kept in close contact with Sporting Bengal and helped set up its youth section three years ago.
Now the team have landed quite a coup after installing Uddin in the hotseat – he was Barnet’s assistant manager for a spell and now works with the Football Supporters Federation as a diversity and campaigns manager in partnership with Kick It Out.
The only way was up for Sporting Bengal off the back of a disappointing season in the Essex Senior League last term and Uddin admits his squad has only just started to shape up.
"It’s been good – really challenging but exciting," said Uddin, whose side currently lie 11th in the league. "The club finished bottom of the league last year, and in recent years they’ve been under performing.
"It’s just nice to have wiped the slate clean and built an identity from the ground up.
"If you want players to develop you need to put them in a professional environment and we just didn’t have that – no pre-season, no physio, nothing was in place.
"So we started with about 100 players turning up from the local community for our first session, and the majority of last year’s squad also came because they knew we wanted to do something new.
"There were a few diamonds in the rough, and some of them were not so good! But I’m really happy with the reception in the community and the team we’ve not got in place.
The FA Vase first round proper takes place across the country this weekend
"Because we had to start afresh, it delayed our development as I wanted to give everyone an opportunity but now we’ve got an established squad."
Sporting Bengal have battled their way through the qualifying rounds to line up an FA Vase first-round tie with Southall, who in the Spartan South Midlands League are one division below them.
And Uddin says he would not begrudge Southall – Finalists in 1986 – the victory this weekend.
"Occasions like this are why we take the job, they’re the games to look forward to and gets everyone excited," added the 33-year-old.
"Southall are very much a club in a similar vein as us, so knowing that either us or them are going through to the next round makes it even better.
"In our last game we had just one player involved who played last season and some of these boys I’m very confident will go on to play at a higher level.
"I didn’t have a professional environment when I grew up, I just played with a ball dodging cars in traffic. If I had someone that gave me advice that would have been absolutely huge, and that’s what we’re aiming to do."
