Oliver Deed on a solid season for Hadley FC
While the footballing elite have assembled in Canada, Mexico and the US for the World Cup, those of us involved at the grassroots level are enjoying a break from the beautiful game.
The pause provides some time to reflect on the season just past, and the one to come. At Hadley, we get to look back on a solid fourth season in the Southern Football League and look forward to what we hope will be a competitive fifth.
On the face of it, a 10th place finish in the Southern League Division One Central may give the impression the season was somewhat uninspiring but, truth be told, most of us were delighted with that outcome.
After losing top scorer Isaac Stones and supporters’ player of the season Caoilan McGettigan last summer, and with them some 40 goals, a second consecutive play-off finish was always unlikely.
Manager Anthony Clark, who is nearing ten years at Brickfield Lane, continues to work with a budget most rivals would regard as loose change, and another top half finish in the league was a fantastic achievement.
The season opened poorly, with a home defeat to relegated Hitchin Town and an early FA Cup exit, before the wins started to flow. There was a fine run in the FA Trophy, in which the Bricks caused an upset by beating National League South side Dartford in the Third Qualifying Round, before bowing out 1-0 at Tilbury. A rare penalty miss from captain and talisman Luke Alfano that day left Clark and his management team to rue what might have been.
From a player perspective, a highlight was seeing Lenny Asamoah excel having been signed in the summer from Southend Manor. The striker is the very definition of a menace, and his all-action style caused defenders no end of problems throughout the season.
In one extraordinary autumn spell, Asamoah scored three consecutive hat-tricks in the league, with the goals coming against Hertford Town, Enfield and Ware. We hope he’s back in August but performances like his tend to attract the attention of bigger clubs.
So what of this season? The foundations, as ever, are strong. Inevitably there’ll be players who move on, but we hope captain Alfano stick around alongside the likes of Cameron Ferguson, Jordan Edwards and Finley Aldridge who have been great servants of the club for several years.
Some additional defensive prowess is needed to address a soft underbelly that was occasionally exposed last season, not helped by a lengthy injury list that never quite abated. With a more solid back line and a kinder run on the injury front, there is no reason why the club can’t push for the play-offs again.
The 2025/26 season was, in the end, one of consolidation rather than celebration. But consolidation at Step Four, for a club of Hadley’s size, is its own kind of success. The good ship Hadley steadily navigated the odd tricky wave and made it back to port safely. Now the ship looks set to sail once more, with a more illustrious destination in mind.
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