NOTHING CAN SEPARATE US!
AT times they were inseparable on and off the pitch and now the statistics prove there was nothing between James Norwood and Andy Cook over the past decade.
When we crunched the numbers looking for the National League’s top scorer between 2009-10 and 2018-19 the result was a dead heat.
Norwood and Cook, who famously fired Tranmere Rovers back into the Football League, both netted 108 goals in Non-League’s top flight during that time.
“It was classic big man/ small man and we had a partnership where we couldn’t really be stopped,” Norwood said.
“If people dropped deep to stop me getting in behind, he was capable of bringing it down and smashing it in from 30 yards.
“He’s the best header of a ball I’ve seen in 12 years and we bounced off each other. We’re good mates, we drove in together and that relationship always helped.”
Norwood is now at Ipswich Town while Cook’s prolific spell at Prenton Park also earned him a crack at League One with Walsall.
He said: “I loved every minute at Tranmere. It was the best two years of my career.
“Playing with Nors made it easier, understanding each other and it showed with the amount of goals we got together.
“To do what I did at Tranmere and to have a chance to go to the League, I buzz off it.”
The pair both spent eight seasons in the National League – a fact not lost on Norwood.
“I felt I could have moved to a decent level after a year or two but it just didn’t happen,” he told.
“It took a long time, longer than I thought it would but to put those sort of numbers up is something I’m proud of.”
However, he added: “I spent four years playing right midfield at Forest Green so I like to take most of those numbers off.
“I’d been a striker for 18 years so I wasn’t really too sure what was going on. We were being asked to double up on wingers so I didn’t have the opportunity to get forward.
“The years I had at Forest Green, physically, I was a monster – absolutely rapid and strong.
“I had the ability to beat anybody I came up against and a couple of FA Cup games proved that when we played League 1 and Championship opposition. I just skipped by players.”
Norwood may have been frustrated at the New Lawn but still bagged 45 goals in the three seasons leading up to their play-off defeat to Bristol Rovers.
Meanwhile, different challenges were facing Cook, whose move from Barrow to Grimsby Town turned sour in his second season with the Mariners.
That in spite of being named the division’s – and The NLP’s – Young Player of the Year in 2012-13.
“I came back for pre-season and to this day, I couldn’t tell you why I wasn’t playing,” he said. “It was like my face didn’t fit.
“I was in and out of the squad – sometimes in the stand – and that went on for the whole season. I was miffed and I don’t know what I did wrong.
No regrets
“I knew what was coming that summer and my options were limited. I was close to signing for Chester but they said no after I’d agreed.
“Darren Edmondson, who took me on loan at Workington when I was a youth team player, messaged me and I ended up going back to Barrow.
“Going back there, I don’t have any regrets.
I don’t think I’d be where I am now if it wasn’t for Barrow.”
Cook’s 24 goals for the Bluebirds in 2015-16 saw him snapped up by Tranmere and he repaid their faith by scoring 50 league goals in 87 appearances.
His strike partner was now playing in his favoured position and it showed.
Norwood said: “That meant everything and it’s the reason I signed for Tranmere.
“I had a point to prove because I spent four years at Forest Green telling them I was a striker and they continued to put me in midfield so I couldn’t wait to get out.
“I’d like to think 90-odd goals in four years proved that I’ve always been a centre-forward.”
He added: “If you fall out of the
Conference, you’ve not really got anywhere to go so it keeps you hungry because you want to be successful. It drives you to keep improving, waiting for your shot and then taking it when it comes.”
Fairytale
Completing our podium is another iconic promotion winner who spent much of the decade playing in the Football League.
So it speaks volumes that Danny Kedwell’s four seasons at Step 1 brought him 75 goals with AFC Wimbledon and later Ebbsfleet. Kedwell scored the spot-kick which took the Dons up in 2011 and that fairytale moment against Luton is still etched in his brain.
He said: “Before we took the penalties, I pulled the lads and said ‘this is our time.’ “For Wimbledon and their story, what they had to do, to start from the bottom again and to score that winning goal, it’s a kid’s dream. “We won Conference South in my first year there. The second year I went into Terry Brown and said to him: ‘I want to be captain because I’ll get you promoted.’ “He laughed at me. He said ‘you’ll get me promoted?’ and I said ‘yeah, I will’ so he said ‘OK, you’re my captain’ – and we got promoted that year.
“He said to me afterwards ‘I’ll never forget that day because you delivered.’”
Kedwell scored 24 goals that season and seven years later, came agonisingly close to another play-off party.
As the talisman of Daryl McMahon’s newly-promoted Fleet, he found the net 18 times before the Kent side were finally slain by Norwood and Cook in the semi-final.
“I thought we were going to get promoted that year,” he said. “We’d have won the final because everything was going for us but extra time twice in four days killed us.
“I was more of a team player at Ebbsfleet than I was at Wimbledon.
“I used to run in behind and I had pace and power but when I went to the Football League I got taught a bit more. I was better on the ball and my whole game changed.
“I was never going to get as many goals at Ebbsfleet but I was more of an all-round player.
“The National League is tough. The standard is really good and scoring goals isn’t easy.”