Ibbo: Future of the club is bright
Sam Watts talks to Rooks manager Steve Ibbitson about a season from hell that had a heavenly ending.
Sam Watts: How does it feel to have kept the team up in these circumstances, with the club having been so close to being wound up earlier in the season?
Steve Ibbitson: Well, it's just brilliant. We've gone through a lot of stuff this season. The playing side this season had to take a back seat initially due to the financial problems, and the last thing we wanted to do was get relegated. There were three priorities at the start of the season and avoiding relegation was the last of them. The first priority was to survive the season, the second was to finish it in a better financial state than we started it, and the third was to avoid relegation. As a football man and manager, the third priority was the one that was most important to me, but the trouble was if we didn't meet the first two priorities then we wouldn't have had a club to keep out of relegation.
SW: How important was it to secure fourth from bottom and therefore avoid being in the situation Worcester now find themselves in, sweating on whether or not they'll be relegated despite the season being over?
SI: It was really important. We'd have preferred to have been higher up the league and I think most teams would say we were too good to be relegated. We haven't had a striker all season and it turned into a bit of a dogfight. From what I have gathered, it seems to be that Worcester won't go down. But they've got a bit of a nightmare situation now, having to wait and see what their position is – and I don't envy them for that.
SW: How important was Joe Keehan's contribution? Nineteen goals is impressive for any midfielder.
SI: Joe's goals are part of what's kept us up. He's scored a lot of goals this season and made a huge contribution, as has Rikki Banks who's been stopping goals going in at the other end. There have been great performances from a lot of other players such as Chris Breach, Jack Walder and Anthony Barness. The two loan signings, Sami El-Abd and Robert Gradwell strengthened things up at either end and they also deserve credit.
SW: Coming towards the end of the season you set the team a target of winning four of the last six games – was there ever any doubt in your mind that you could achieve this?
SI: There were various targets we talked about but we had to accumulate as many points as we could do and we had to win as many games as possible. We didn't want to get pinned down to saying this is a must win game, because if you lose it you can't say to the team afterwards that you didn't mean it (that it was a must win game). We knew we had to get a number of wins and at the end of it all it didn't matter where those wins came from. We didn't do anything differently during the last six games, although it may have seemed that we had, but we had that little bit more quality due to Sami El-Abd and Robert Gradwell. Adding them to the squad was the final piece in the jigsaw.
SW: Do you feel the off-field obstacles your side faced during the course of the season galvanised the team and spurred them on?
SI: No, not at all. Generally speaking I don't think players even think about financial problems unless they're not getting their wages. I think players generally go out and play and I don't think off-field problems have affected the players anywhere near as much as people would imagine.
SW: After all the problems this season, do you see a brighter futire ahead for the club?
SI: Most definitely, there are a lot of plans and a lot of people now wanting to become involved in the club. If the things that are being looked at come to fruition then the clubs got a great future. Make no mistake, there's still a long way to go. We've still got a lot of debt but hopefully the debt isn't with people who are likely to close us down which is a relief, but there's still a long way to go. If people do get involved then there's definitely a bright future for the club. We need to use this as a springboard, otherwise all the hard work this season will have been for nothing.
SW: You have achieved hero status amongst the fans – have you reached a decision on your future yet, and if not, when do you expect to?
SI: As I say, there are a number of things happening at the club at the moment and that's probably going to take two to three weeks to a month to see how that develops, and I really want to see how that goes before making a decision. Also, it's what's best for the club. Myself and my two coaches will definitely be involved with Lewes next year, but in what capacity I don't know. We've worked too hard to walk away from it, but in exactly what capacity we will decide in the coming weeks.
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Weather for Lewes
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
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