Meteoric rise as scaffolder Sorba scales new heights
Sorba Thomas
TWELVE months ago Sorba Thomas was turning out for Boreham Wood – now he is hoping 2022 is the year he can make it to the Premier League and World Cup finals.
No wonder the Huddersfield wingback, whose domestic assists tally this season is one ahead of Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold, still pinches himself over how far he has come.
But it could have been so different. Rejected by West Ham as a teenager, he was set to quit the game and become a PE teacher.
‘As a young kid, when you get told you’re kind of not good enough it’s not something you want to hear. So I didn’t really take it well,’ he says.
Family and friends convinced him to keep chasing his dream. A pal recommended him to National League Boreham Wood – where he learned his trade while toiling as a scaffolder.
Huddersfield snapped him up last January, he made his debut a month later. By August he was Championship player of the month and he was called up by Wales in September.
‘I knew it was a massive step into the Championship but once I’d got my chance I didn’t look back. It was easy to fit in straight away,’ he adds. ‘Last year I did a lot of learning from the manager and players, and it helped me kick on this year.’ Thomas had been more used to playing as a winger before joining the Terriers, who visit Reading in the Championship tomorrow.
‘Some days I enjoy it, some days I don’t. But for me it’s about getting an opportunity in the team,’ he says.
‘Obviously I want to score more goals to make the stats a little bit better but when I get an assist it’s an extra bonus.’
His tally of 11 assists this season, including eight in the league, has got the Terriers pushing for promotion.
It is a striking contrast to last year’s 20th-place finish but Thomas says: ‘We’ve got a good, humble bunch of boys willing to run for each other and leave it all out on the pitch, and then
the quality will just shine through. We’re just getting stronger and stronger. Everyone’s following in the right direction. So for us it is to just keep that up.
‘It’s about trying to get Huddersfield back to where they really should be, in the Premier League.’
Thomas likens boss Carlos Corberan to a fellow bearded Spaniard in a hit Netflix crime drama – played by lookalike Alvaro Morte.
‘I call him the Professor out of Money Heist because he’s got a plan and if that is not working there’s another plan. It’s good to work under. He is aggressive, he is football crazy, a winner and very passionate.’
The Londoner’s rise in club football has been recognised with a call-up for Wales, making his debut in a 2-2 draw with the Czech Republic in October.
That brought tears of joy for his mother, who hails from Newport.
He admits to being starstruck at meeting the likes of Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, and only ever wanted to play for the land of his mothers.
‘They are a very encouraging bunch of boys and very humble,’ adds Thomas, who accepts his attempts at speaking Welsh are ‘not amazing’. But his association with Wales goes back years and he is getting to grips with the national anthem. Fans also loved him for plastering a Welsh flag over an English one on his Fifa game card.
‘Most of the summer I’m always there – Porthcawl, the beaches, Barry Island,’ says Thomas, who got his first Wales shirt signed by his team-mates.
‘After some games I’ll collect shirts because it reminds me of where I come from and how quick it is.
‘Sometimes I pinch myself and I talk to my friends about how a year ago I was playing my last game for Boreham Wood. It’s just so crazy. Now it’s all about creating more memories.’