Hamer is looking the pick of arrivals at this stage
DEFENDER HAS MADE THE
NOTHING spoke more strongly of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s determination to put Burton Albion back on the right track than the handing of two-and-a-half-year contracts to three hugely promising young players during the transfer window.
Tom Hamer and Jonny Smith arrived on January 29 and were followed three days later by Terry Taylor.
Josh Parker was already through the door on an 18-month deal and loan players arrived but fans could see that here were three players the club could definitely build around beyond the end of the season.
Of course, it was by no means certain that the following season would still be played in League One but hope was beginning to grow. It was not too long before hope would turn to belief.
When the young trio signed, though, Hasselbaink had presided over only two games.
The Brewers had kept a hardearned clean sheet away to Gillingham and won the game thanks to Hayden Carter’s goal but, Carter apart, it was still the team that had struggled so badly in the first half of the season.
The same was true of the next game, when Ipswich Town, perennial result-getters against the Brewers, were fortunate to go back to East Anglia with a 1-0 win after a deflected cross had landed conveniently on the head of Ipswich’s Mark Mcguinness for the only goal.
Parker and Sean Clare came off the bench in that game and showed enough enterprise in the last 15 minutes to raise a little hope.
By the time Hull City came to town a full three weeks later, though, the
BIGGEST IMPACT IN TRIO OF YOUNG SIGNINGS SO FAR
three young guns were in the building. Hamer started, while Smith and Taylor came off the bench in the second half.
Smith’s 90th-minute winner, expertly taking down Parker’s sublime pass and bursting past two defenders to score, made him the immediate stand-out of the three.
He had already had their first ontarget effort of the game after arriving in the 63rd minute.
However, arguably, over the course of the next 14 weeks, it has been Hamer who has made the biggest impact. Here’s an assessment of his contribution and we will follow up another day with a further look at Smith and Taylor.
To focus only on Hamer’s prodigious long throws would be to miss what a talented all-round footballer Burton have landed.
He arrived as and made his debut as a right-back, the position seen as his natural one and impressed
against Hull with his no-nonsense approach to defending and power in the air.
He was an unused substitute the following week, with loan signing Earl in at left-back, John Brayford back to right-back and Michael Bostwick back in action at centrehalf.
Football usually throws up something fateful to change the course of things, however, and Earl’s sending off in the 3-0 home defeat to Sunderchip land was it for Hamer. He came off the bench in the reshuffle and has not been out of the side since.
It has been left-back where he has played most, keeping Earl out of the side and, while he openly admits he often comes inside on to his right foot when going forward, he has coped well enough.
What has made Hamer so impressive, though, is not just his intelligent, dogged defending but the way he joins the attack.
He is never afraid to come into the middle and has often appeared as if he were a marauding midfielder, arrives late to take a shot.
His first of three goals for Burton was a header from a free kick to open the scoring in the 2-1 win against Swindon Town, perhaps the sort of goal he might be expected to
in with.
He joked after that that the media team had “set me up” by calling him a goalscoring defender when he signed.
For his other goals, he was involved in both the build-up and the finish.
Away to Doncaster Rovers, he won a header from Ben Garratt’s goal kick to set an attack in motion halfway but immediately kept on running as Kane Hemmings laid the ball off to Ryan Edwards, who found Hamer steaming up outside him in the inside right channel and slid in a pass which was despatched into the corner of the net from 20 yards with power and precision.
Then, in the thrashing of Fleetwood Town, he again joined the attack, making himself available on the right for Edwards to lay the ball back to and sending in a teasing cross, which, after a half-clearance, was collected by Smith.
His lay-off into space appeared to give no team-mate a chance but Hamer arrived rapidly to get to the ball ahead of the defence and bury a shot.
It was enterprising, opportunistic and would have been admired by a poacher such as his team-mate Hemmings.
All of that is a bonus, of course. He is a defender first and foremost and it is easy to see why Dino Maamria, previously his manager with Oldham Athletic, was so keen to get him on board.
At 21, Hamer had already made 104 first-team appearances for Oldham, captaining the side in his 100th game, and scored six goals.
So far and without wanting to go too far overboard, he is a young man who appears to have all the tools as a footballer.
It was enterprising, opportunistic and would have been admired by a poacher such as his team-mate Hemmings.