TOP OF THE CLASS
A look back to when the students of Team Bath became masters of their art
RELEASED by Charlton Athletic at 18, Kevin Watson never dreamed he’d wind up inside a giant bath being groped by Jonathan Ross.
Yet there he was, decked in the blue and gold of Team Bath, watched by an audience of millions on the BBC quiz show They Think It’s All Over.
“Looking back, it’s just surreal,” laughs Watson, now in charge at Step 4 Cray Valley PM. “It all came about because we reached the first round of the FA Cup in 2002. We were the first university team to do it in 122 years.
“A few months later they had us on the programme for a round called ‘Feel the Sportsman’. It was basically Jonathan Ross and Steve Davis trying to guess who we were.
“We had a great time. We were all taken to this hotel in Shepherd’s Bush, treated like superstars. We went to the green room. For a bunch of hard-up students it was pure luxury!”
Like They Think It’s All Over,
Team Bath’s brief, glorious ride from the campus to the cusp of the Football League is now consigned to history. Yet for nine years, the Scholars looked unstoppable.
Formed in 2000, Team Bath was the brainchild of Ged Roddy. Known today as the architect of the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, Roddy was appointed as director of sport at Bath University in 1992 and quickly transformed the site’s modest ‘training village’ into a national hub for elite athletes.
Hurdler Colin Jackson and swimmer Mark Foster both used the university as a base, while students or alumni have featured at every Olympics since Atlanta ’96.
Football, though, was Roddy’s real passion. And his idea, based on the American scholarship model, was to fuse a university education with full-time training to give discarded academy players a second chance.
At his side was Paul Tisdale, a former Southampton player who managed the team from 2001-2006 and later guided Exeter City from the Conference into League One.
Destiny
“I was 26 at the time, and my body was failing,” explains Tisdale. “I had no intention of ever being a coach. But I stumbled into Ged, he told me his plans and it struck a chord.
“I loved the idea of mentoring, of allowing players to take responsibility for their own destiny and live like adults. It was the antithesis of everything I’d seen – and didn’t like – in professional football.
“That first year, we weren’t Team Bath. It was just a university programme. But we got very little support from governing bodies and we quickly realised that our initial plan – to sell players to professional clubs – wouldn’t work. The authorities just didn’t want to know.
“So we realised we’d have to create a team, get promoted through the pyramid and do it that way. Team Bath FC was born out of that.
“It was a very hard sell at first. We had no history. We hadn’t even kicked a ball. Yet we were basically asking players who were good enough to play at the top level of Non-League to come and play in the Screwfix First Division. Of all the things I’ve done in 20 years of coaching, that was one of the hardest.
“What we did have, though, was that USP of providing an education at a top ten university and sporting facilities among the best in the UK. That was the leverage.”
Watson, who arrived in the summer of 2001 after attending a talk by Tisdale at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium, was instantly persuaded.
“I was just blown away,” he says. “The facilities were as good as any Premier League team, even today. “Conditioning rooms. Plunge pools. The best physios in the business. We were just rejects from pro clubs. But everybody else – the swimmers, the runners, the tennis players – was at the top of their game.
“You’d be in classes with people who were first, second or third in the country. On the verge of the Olympics. Yet we got treated just the same way.”
Then there was Tisdale, who just a year before his appointment had been playing against Lazio in a Cup Winners’ Cup quarter-final for Greek side Panionios.
“I can’t speak highly enough of Tis,” says Watson. “He’s the best coach or manager I’ve ever seen in terms of details. Anywhere. He’d always give constructive feedback that was easy to understand, but the detail of it was just exceptional.
“I sustained a really bad injury in my first year. I tore my posterior cruciate and medial lateral ligaments. The support I got from Paul – and everybody – was remarkable and that stuck with me. To this day, I’m heartbroken when one of my players gets injured and it all stems from that time.”
Distraction
The ying to Tisdale’s yang was Ivor Powell, an octogenarian war veteran who had played in the First Division for Aston Villa. A fixture of the university’s sports programme for three decades, he was recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest active coach on his 90th birthday in 2006.
“What a legend he was,” laughs Watson. “The guy was in his eighties and he’d be doing all the sit-ups and press-ups.
“He’d slam a medicine ball into your stomach. If you complained he’d say ‘Do it to me’.
You’d be like ‘Are you sure, Ivor?’. But he’d insist. He was old school, a tough, tough man.”
At a time when even Conference clubs were largely semi-professional, that combination of elite coaching and full-time training was significant.
Within four years, the Scholars had risen from Western League Division One to the Southern Premier. Along the way, they lost 4-2 to Mansfield in a first-round FA Cup tie that was televised live on Sky.
“For some reason, we just captured the public imagination,” says Watson. “We even had to go on a training camp at one point because all the media was becoming a distraction.
“It was a brilliant time, though. Ray Kelvin, the guy
who founded Ted Baker, was big mates with Tis. He actually funded my scholarship for the full four years, which I probably didn’t appreciate enough at the time.
“Anyway, before that Mansfield game, we all went for a suit fitting. Ray got us all suits, washbags, towels. One of the boys even ended up working for him in the end.”
By 2008-09, the Scholars were rubbing shoulders with Bath City in Conference South, their academic core supplemented by full-time pros and the EFL a stated aim.
Yet within a year, the dream was dead. A change to Conference and EFL rules meant that unless Team Bath became a limited company, they could not qualify for further promotions.
Unwilling to alter the ethos and structure, Roddy resigned the club from the Conference and Team Bath FC disbanded.
Tisdale, who was replaced as manager by Andy Tillson in 2006, has no doubt that the rule changes were a deliberate ploy to prevent the Scholars – or any copycat clubs – from upsetting the established order.
Social sphere
“We faced resentment from start to finish,” he maintains. “From clubs, from chairmen, even officials. We got to games and some referees would be saying to us ‘You’re students, you don’t deserve to be here’.
“OK, it’s a top class university and the people who go there are privileged. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. People were just bigoted. The whole atmosphere was one of animosity and resentment.
“We were a challenge to conventions. Because a player ran up slag heaps 40 years ago doesn’t mean he should make his own players do it as a coach. You move with the times.
“But the establishment, the blazers, whatever you want to call them – they didn’t see that. They found every possible reason for us not to exist.
“First we had to leave the university campus because it was deemed unsuitable. We’re talking about a world class facility, state of the art. But because the visiting chairman couldn’t park his car within 50 yards of the changing room, it was no good.
“We got around that by playing at Twerton Park, which was great. But it was only a matter of time before they backed us into a corner and created a situation that the club couldn’t get out of.
“It’s a crying shame, because there’s no doubt that had Team Bath continued, they would be an EFL club now. Andy was a fabulous fit and the opportunities were so great.”
Watson, too, is saddened by Team Bath’s demise.
“You get a lot of colleges attached to football clubs these days,” he says. “But let’s be completely honest. If a kid is at a professional club then their mindset – and the club’s – is that football takes priority.
“At Bath, we could split our focus 50-50. We went to university with the mindset of getting a degree and if we weren’t pulling our weight in terms of education, Ged or Tis would have a word. The lecturers were always in close contact.
“At the same time, we were allowed to live like students, to go out and be lively but also be trusted to take our football seriously. It was the best of all worlds.
“Because it wasn’t just football. It wasn’t just education. It was about holistic development – how the experience moulded you as a person. As a man, and as an educator in my job, I’ve taken so much from the ethos and values instilled by Tis and Ged. It was a wonderful time.”
And that, says Tisdale, is why he still takes immense satisfaction from his pioneering work in Somerset. “Ultimately, it was about opening a young player’s eyes to a different social sphere, and putting him in an environment which opened doors to a life beyond playing.
“It’s just such a shame that so many people in the game wanted us gone, because it should have been a new paradigm. The start of how things should be to take our sport to a more credible level. Had we been allowed to continue, I have no doubt there’d now be five or six university teams in the National League, all challenging for the Football League.
“But that’s the thing with leading. You have to be ahead of the game, but not so far that you upset the old order. Unfortunately, I think we were a decade ahead of the times.”