RICKETTS: FA CUP IS EVERYTHING TO US
Shrews boss says Liverpool tie will bring vital cash and memories for a lifetime
SAM RICKETTS has heard the arguments about the future of the FA Cup and understands. The manager of Shrewsbury Town has played in the Premier League and knows how it feels to be on a treadmill of constant football.
But Ricketts, 38, has played down the divisions and non-League level too. So he knows what the FA Cup can mean to a club such as his. Liverpool are in town tomorrow. There is a big game to play and, who knows, maybe even a replay?
‘I can see exactly what Jurgen klopp is saying when he talks about no replays,’ Ricketts tells
Sportsmail. ‘They play two games a week all season but for us the FA Cup is everything. It’s historic. We all grew up watching it with the hairs on our neck standing up. It provides amazing memories and opportunities.
‘We are a self-sustaining club. So things like this bring extra income and give us the chance to invest. Does this mean we can invest in the training ground with drainage and video analysis equipment? Maybe it does. So, yeah. The FA Cup is everything to us and this is a game these players will remember for the rest of their lives. These are amazing moments in your life and they could change this club’s future.’
It was an eloquent argument presented by a young manager who has experienced much in the game. Ricketts’ father Derek was a world champion showjumper while his uncle is the former national hunt jockey John Francome. Ricketts was a talented horseman, too, but chose football at 13. For a time, it may have looked like the wrong choice. Ricketts tore up his contract at his first league club Oxford United because he wasn’t playing. He joined non-League Telford but they went bust.
‘People thought I was stupid to leave Oxford but I was naive enough to back myself,’ he recalls. ‘I was 21, a kid. At Telford we went bust in the April but the players saw out the season. On a Friday, we used to get £105 a week in £5 notes just to keep us going.
‘My dad didn’t say anything. He would be that busy with the horses. But eventually I worked through five leagues to the top, the Premier League.
‘Up until that point I always thought I would have been a better showjumper than footballer. I stopped early but am told I could have made a good career out of it. I found it easy. I was on a horse before I could walk. But eventually I got there in football.’
Ricketts played Premier League football for Phil Brown’s Hull City and for Bolton. He won 52 caps with Wales, largely at left back.
‘My grandad was my biggest influence and he made me use my left foot as a kid,’ Ricketts smiles. ‘When I made my Wales debut it was on the left. That was down to him. I gave him my shirt.
‘He won’t be there on Sunday but I have him linked up so he watches all my games on the internet. He still says the same things to me now, “Pass the ball along the floor . . . hard and fast”. All the things he has been telling me throughout my career.’ Ricketts — a boyhood Liverpool fan — joined Shrewsbury as manager in December 2018 after a short stint at Wrexham. The brief delivered by chairman Roland Wycherley was straightforward: move the club forwards without breaking the bank. Ricketts’ team are 16th in League One having not won in the league since December 21.
‘The club has been brilliantly run over 24 years by the chairman,’ he says. ‘They were a million in debt and now it doesn’t owe a penny. I was brought in to see off relegation last season. ‘Now we are six months into a rebuild. It’s a long-term project. There has been a 39-player turnover since I have been in and I am trying to build a squad capable of stability and growth.
‘We don’t have big money so we need players on the up who are hungry. We are playing sides who pay double what we do but our aim is to push towards the top half of League One.’
TV viewers tomorrow will not see many recognisable names in the Shrewsbury team but there are players such as defender Donald Love, who started at Manchester United. ‘I see players who want to hang on at big clubs,’ says Ricketts. ‘ They say, “I am a Premier League player” but my view is that they aren’t unless they are actually in the team.
‘It’s about snobbery. I respect players who will walk away from a big club and back themselves to make it work here, lower down.
‘On a different scale, that is what I did. It worked out for me and I am determined it will work out for players here.’