Paul Benson – from Step 7 to the Football League
PAUL BENSON – FROM STEP 7 TO THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE
PAUL Benson was working as an accountant in the City of London when he skived off work to accept the offer that changed his life.
“I was 22 or 23, playing for a team called White Ensign in the Essex Olympian League,” recalls the former Charlton Athletic, Swindon Town and Luton Town striker, now 40.
“I’d been on trial at Southend and scored four goals in three games. The problem was, they were flying in League Two at the time.
“Steve Tilson, the manager, was very honest. He said ‘You’ve done really well. But I think we’ll probably go up this year and it might be too much for you. You can come back in pre-season or, if you’d prefer, Dagenham have been watching you and are very interested’.
“Dagenham organised for me to play in a trial game, which I remember well because I was rubbish! I didn’t score, did nothing of note. I thought ‘I’ve blown this here’. But when I went into the clubhouse, John Still was there. He said ‘Well done, son, come to my office tomorrow and we’ll talk about a contract’.
“In the heat of the moment, I said ‘Yeah, great’, completely forgetting I had a full-time job. The next day, I had to make up some story about meeting a client so I could sneak out of the office and get the tube to Dagenham East.
“When I got to the ground, Stilly said ‘What do you need?’. I was earning about £350-a-week at the time, but even a sniff of football was enough. I didn’t want to be an accountant.
“I said to him ‘Look, I’m renting in London at the moment. I’ll move back home with my mum and I’ll do it for £150. John shook his head. He said ‘That would be a bit of a p***take’. I’ll give you £175’. I signed up, quit my job and went back to my mum’s with my tail between my legs.
“It was a real risk. I’d worked my way up in accountancy, done my exams and gone from a small firm in Southend to a bigger one in the city. I’d given that up for a one-year deal.
“But I can still imagine myself sitting at an accountancy firm now. I’d be comfortable, earning good money. But there would always be that voice in the back of my head saying ‘What if you’d taken that contract? Where would you be now?’.”
Certainly not a successful academy coach at Luton Town with a CV boasting four promotions, two Conference titles, 170 goals and 273 games in the Football League.
Born in Southend-on-Sea, Benson actually began his career at Roots Hall but was released at the age of 17.
“I broke my leg during the first year of my scholarship,” he explains. “These days, they’d probably afford you another year. But things were a lot harsher back then, and I was by no means the best player. I totally expected to get released.”
Today, Benson believes that rejection – and his subsequent drop to Step 7 – was the foundation for everything he would later achieve.
“My two older brothers played for White Ensign, and that’s why I went,” he says. “It was a brilliant time.
Smashed
“These days, players will do anything they can to stay in the system. Coast along in the Under-23s playing odd games here and there. There’s a lot of fear about going out of that Championship or Premier League bubble and playing in Non-League.
“But it’s such a great place to find yourself and discover what you can do. Academies are very good at identifying weakness and making it better. What they are not so good at is focussing on a strength and saying ‘OK, let’s make him brilliant – the best at what he does’.
“That’s what Non-League did for me. From 17 onwards, I played pretty much every game. Every year I was getting more goals and learning new things, different ways to protect the ball from centre-halves. And there were some big lads in those leagues. I was a boy getting smashed about the place, but I loved it. I got to know myself as a player.
“I played there for about five years, winning leagues and cups. I built up a winning mentality which, again, you don’t get in academies.
“And it was all in an envie ronment where I could make mistakes. Imagine an acadeing my player coming to a first team in the Championship now. One mistake could potenteam tially cost that team £180m.
“Then you go home and thousands of people are slatal ing you on social media.
“I was making mistakes in front of one man and his dog. Yes, I’d have a 35-year-old centre-half shouting at me for
giving the ball away, but we’d both be in the bar afterwards chatting and laughing. It’s a much more forgiving environment.
“By the time I signed for Dagenham in 2005, I was resilient. I was experienced. I knew what I was good at and how to win games. It was a brilliant, brilliant grounding.”
Initially, Benson struggled with life in the Conference. A broken leg, plus stiff competition from Craig Mackail-Smith and Tresor Kandol, restricted him to one goal in 26 games.
“I’d be in for one game, out for three. As a forward, that’s a killer,” he recalls. “But I think John always intended to give me another year. He was giving me that first season to eye up the level and work out what was needed.”
Belief
And that’s exactly what he did. Swift but somewhat slight and gangly on his arrival at Victoria Road, Benson spent the summer of 2006 bulking up. A prolific pre-season then spilled over into the regular campaign. Playing alongside Mackail-Smith prior to his
January sale to Peterborough, then former Crawley man Ben Strevens, Benson plundered 30 goals in all competitions.
His heroics helped Still’s side to a long-awaited title, and also garnered a Golden Boot and Conference Player of the Year award.
“I remember scoring against Aldershot in my third or fourth game,” he says. “Then I got back-to-back goals. After that, I thought I would score every time I walked onto the pitch. That belief stuck with me for the rest of my career.”
Benson would win another promotion with Dagenham in 2010 before leaving for successful stints with Charlton and Swindon Town, where he won the League Two title under Paolo Di Canio.
He later reunited with Still at Luton, where a potent partnership with Andre Gray helped fire the Hatters back into the EFL in 2014.
“I loved my time in NonLeague,” he says. “In my role at Luton now, I constantly try to get across the importance of players getting out to those levels.
“Because, in my opinion, there’s no better place to learn.”