The FA Youth Cup has thrown up an intriguing tie in its preliminary round as two former Cheltenham Town left-backs prepare to go head-to-head.
Jamie Victory is a club legend, having spent more than a decade playing at Whaddon Road as the Robins rose from the non-league wilderness to the third tier of English football, and now oversees Cheltenham’s academy.
Cheltenham v New College
FA Youth Cup
Preliminary round
World of Smile Stadium
7pm Monday 7 September 2015
Opposite him is Ian Howell – academy manager and head coach at New College Swindon – who occupied the left-back role at Cheltenham for 14 months shortly before Victory arrived.
Cheltenham, who enjoyed a pre-season tour to Portugal this summer, will be favourites to progress and Victory admits that is exactly what his young charges plan on doing.
“For me the performance is always key and the result is for the players,” he said. “They always want to win, no matter what they are doing – whether it’s pool, table tennis or anything else. They know what it is all about.
“We have played against Tottenham and Birmingham in the last couple of years in this competition and had very close games against them. It’s all about development, but this is a cup so it’s nice to have that playing-to-win mentality.
“We are doing well. We had a good pre-season – we went to Benfica for two weeks and the boys developed really well over there.
“The start of the season has been good, they have been very competitive. Last week they played very well against Swindon and came away with a 3-0 win.
“New College have got some ex-Swindon academy players but apart from that I don’t really know too much about them. They are going to be very competitive and organised and a bit of a banana skin for us.”
New College cannot boast of trips abroad and previous cup clashes against the likes of Spurs but Howell is impressed with his current crop.
The programme currently has 48 players on its books and takes on roughly 20 new faces each season, mostly recruited from the Wiltshire area.
And Howell, who has also been part of the coaching staff at Chelsea for almost a decade, is hoping his charges can show their worth on Monday night.
“It was nice from my point of view when the draw came through,” he said. “I had a couple of years playing at Cheltenham in the late 90s. It was a couple of my best years and I regretted leaving.
“Jamie came about 18 months after I moved on. I don’t know him but I knew of him as a player and he is doing a good job over there now.
“I split my time between Chelsea and the college. It’s brilliant – it’s an unbelievable place and I’m in my ninth season here. I work primarily with the Under-13s. It just means I don’t get much of a break at weekends!
“It will be nice for our lads to test themselves against some professional players.”
