Peacocks’ boss Leigh Robinson caught up with tauntontown.com to give his thoughts on the unforgettable 2017-18 campaign:
“Well, it’s been an amazing year, possibly the best ever for this football club and I am sure that everyone involved at the club is on cloud nine at the moment. I think the most pleasing thing for me is not what we have achieved but the way we have done it, with the long unbeaten run, unbeaten away run and how comprehensively we won the league in the end. There’s winning and there’s winning in style and we certainly did the latter.
There isn’t a non-league club in the south west that has had a better two seasons than us when you throw in FA Cup first round, FA Trophy first round, a league title, a county cup, play-offs last season and how this has grown the club massively off the pitch too in terms of revenue, crowd numbers and community engagement. We are on a massive upward curve in terms of momentum and hopefully this will spill over into next season.
Winning the league is a journey over 10 months and 42 games. Rightly so, the players who were here at the end of the season have had all the plaudits and they have been astonishingly good but it is also important to remember the contribution of other players along the way this season who didn’t finish the campaign with us through a variety of reasons but certainly played a part. Therefore (and I hope I don’t miss anyone) I do want to place on record my thanks to Arran Pugh, Mark Preece, Owen Irish, Ben Palmer, Lewis Powell, Omar Simpson, Chris McGrath, Matt Villis, Ross Staley, Tom Stone and especially Brett Trowbridge for their efforts earlier in the season.
The planning for next season has been going on for the best part of two months now and I am delighted that we have secured the majority of the squad for next year, all of whom were biting my hand off to stay whereas some summers it is me having to beg them! We will of course have to make improvements and tweaks to the squad as the league will be a lot tougher week in week out next year and certainly more physically demanding. It is worth remembering that in the last two seasons we have beaten four National League South sides and taken a National League side to a replay so we know that on our day we are a match for anyone in the non-league pyramid but we need to be at that level consistently next season.
There are so many hard working people behind the scenes who deserve this success more than anyone as they work their fingers to the bone for the club and make such valuable contributions in so many different ways. The head of all of this is of course Kevin Sturmey who is probably the hardest working man in Taunton I reckon. For us now, we get to rest but Kevin now has his busiest time of year getting the ground ready for so many local cup finals which we host at the Viridor which is a key part of us engaging the community and of course brings in much needed revenue out of season. At the end of May his body will be screaming but secretly I think he loves it.
The support has been brilliant this year and most noticeably away from home. I have loved walking into opposition clubhouses when you lot are going mad and cheering everyone of us who comes through the door. That we travel in such good numbers and so vociferously shows how we are growing as a football club as nothing similar ever happens at home games so that goes to show how great our support must be.
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, as a club we must make sure this is not as good as it gets. In my opinion the top of the mountain has not been reached yet. We must keep improving on and off the pitch which myself, Kevin, the management team and the players will all strive to do moving into next season as this club has huge potential, momentum behind it and by no means is the Southern Premier League the holy grail for this club.
Thank you for all your support this year and for all of the kind messages that we have received. It’s been great to put smiles on so many faces and we look forward to seeing you all in July.”