Club: Tetbury Town FC
Grounds: Preston Park, Cirencester Rd, Tetbury, Glos GL8 8EZ (first team); Tetbury Memorial Recreation Ground, Hampton St, GL8 8JN (second and third XIs)
League status: Stroud League Division 1 (first XI); Div 3 (second XI); Div 7 (third XI)
Last season’s final placements: First XI 7th, Div 1; Second XI 6th, Div 3; Third XI bottom, Cirencester League Div 2)
Managers: First XI, Mark Evans, Phil Seal (asst); Second XI: Joel Skinner, Ben Evans (asst); Third XI: Neal Berry, James Niblett (asst)
Chairwoman: Tracey Woodward
Vice-Chairman: David Bricknell
Club Secretary: Martin Lee
Treasurer: Harriet Jones
Youth Chairman: Richard Norris

Martin, give us an idea about the club set-up as you actually have two HQ’s don’t you?

We do in a way and so that everyone knows what we’re talking about, we refer to our Preston Park facility on the outskirts of Tetbury, which our first and second teams play at, as our “new ground”, even though we bought it about 25 years ago!

Our third team play at much older premises at the Memorial Recreation Ground, which is in the centre of town and about a mile-and-a-half away from Preston Park.

Our pitches at Preston Park - we also have a training facility at the back end of the site - are superb ones, which is why we’ve been fortunate to host GFA Cup finals. In fact we have one here on Saturday, April 29 when North Nibley take on Siddington in the final of the Minor North Cup. We also staged a Stroud Charity Cup final last season.

A groundsman from Southampton FC came up and looked at our setting last year and was impressed to learn that our budget for the pitch maintenance is £1,000 annually, 75 per cent of which is for fuel for the mowers and the white liner!

To his credit, our brilliant groundsman Ian Jones won an award from the GFA in his class and we all went to Oaklands Park to see him presented with his memento, which was a welcome and memorable experience.

As for the Rec, our clubhouse and bar are located there but we share the ground with the cricket club which means our pre-season friendlies tend to take place on the training pitch at Preston Park until the cricketers are done for the summer.

There’s a nice clubhouse at the Rec as I know from personal experience pulling pints at one time for a couple of years as bar manager!

There are no official records regarding how long we as a club have been going but we think it began in 1900, so we went ahead and had our centenary celebrations in 2000.

Our club badge portrays two dolphins as it is written in Tetbury folklore that a benefactor of the town, Sir William Romney, was rescued by two of them following a shipping accident.

I’m told you parade three senior teams AND a successful youth section at Tetbury

You’re not wrong there, although when all three adult teams play on the same day it can stretch resources a bit!

That said we have around 85 adult players signed up, which is pretty good going in the modern age, while our youth section is massive for us.

We have Tiny Tigers for three to four-year-olds and Tigers for four to five ages. Then there are sections for under-7s, 8s, 9s, 10s, 12s, 14s and 16s, which means there are about 175 happy kids all told playing football here performing in the North Wilts, Mid Glos and Cotswold Youth leagues.

There’s a mix of FA Level One and Level Two coaches operating under the expert eye of Phil Seal, our men’s first team assistant manager, and I say expert because he’s the man with all the badges, including UEFA B. He seems to be on a course every other week and loves it.

Phil runs fitness classes at the local leisure centre and the like and does some form of martial arts. He’s a postie by trade and the only time I don’t see him running is when he’s delivering his mail! Despite being in his late 40s he is super fit.

Our youth section chairman Richard Norris has unbelievable enthusiasm and is absolutely football nuts, living and breathing it. And importantly he gets things done.

Most home games are played at the Rec although the older age groups use our main and training pitches at Preston Park.

What’s the crack with your Stroud and District One first team at this time, Martin?

We’re hovering around mid-table at the moment and that’s about right as we tend to do well against the better teams and drop points against the lower-ranked ones.

Trouble is we struggle to get the same first team out three weeks running as we don’t have a big enough squad to properly cope with unavailability, which means Mark Evans has to take from the reserves and that has a knock-on effect right through to the thirds.

We’d heard a whisper in the wind that Mark had become available after the club he’d previously managed, Avonvale United, sadly folded last year as a Northern Senior club. So we approached him and he was willing to give it a go with us.

It’s interesting that while he is not afraid to let rip a bit on the sidelines and lets the lads know in no uncertain terms if he’s not happy as most managers do, off the field he’s quite a quiet, retiring type, until he sees that football pitch again!

We’ve been pleased with what he’s done here and hope that will continue into next season. In fact we’re playing Charfield, our league rivals, in the final of the GFA Junior North Cup at Slimbridge FC on Thursday, April 27 (7.15pm). It won’t be easy because while Charfield have been down there in the relegation mix, they’ve pulled off some cracking results in the county cup.

“We’ve had some good results in county competitions down the years too. I know I played in one final in 1990 because I retired immediately after the game and became second-string manager the very next day!

“We’ve also done well in the Stroud Charity Cup and Mills Roberts Cup competitions.

Tetbury Town have had their tough times too as a club haven’t they?

There’s no doubt about that. We lost our place in the Northern Senior League about eight years ago, having been on the brink of gaining a place in the County League as runners-up after our facilities were deemed not up to the requisite standard for the step up, which was very disappointing.

Our co-managers of the time, Alan Ward and Dougie Gray, both left as a consequence, as did some of our best players who wanted to test themselves at higher levels, ironically many with County League clubs.

It was very hard seeing everything go downhill so quickly as we’d been so successful and had our own facility at Preston Park and built nice changing rooms etc.

Thankfully we never dropped any further than our present status in Stroud Division One.

So what of the future; how keen are you for a return to Northern Senior heights?

That is our very next goal and something we’re striving for over the next couple of years. We want to get our two other teams up the ladder a bit too and keep the gap between them as tight as possible.

We have a good, strong committee with ambition and volunteers who are priceless, people like our chairwoman’s father, Rodney Smith, who is a general handyman and does a lot of litter picking and other horrible jobs no one wants to do.

Then there’s Nick Kimber, our resident referee assistant, who runs the first team line in all winds and weathers. Every club needs these people, and that includes Beth Horton, our bar lady, who is just ever-present and a fun girl.

Our chairwoman Tracey is an ex-publican who does all the ordering of everything in while Beth does the dispensing! People like them are like gold dust at clubs like ours. Beth serves the drinks but there seems to be a never-ending supply of chocolate after games too!

We’re extremely grateful to our club sponsors Embark financial consultants, Cala Homes general builders and The Great Tythe Barn wedding venue, who each back our first, second and third teams respectively.

We also welcome support from Royal Oak Pub, Tetury Hardware Store and the wonderfully-named Snooty Fox Hotel, whose input provides us with our nets, matchballs, training equipment and such-like.

Sponsorship like that is invaluable, especially when you have such a big and vibrant youth section and you’re looking to push your senior teams on.