HOWELL’S THAT FOR A REBIRTH
SOUTHALL are one of England’s oldest clubs who kick-started careers of Les Ferdinand, Gordon Hill and Alan Devonshire.
Now current boss Max Howell is determined to write new chapters in the club’s proud history.
After two promotions in the last five seasons, the west London club currently sit third in the Isthmian League South Central Division.
Howell, a former playing favourite at the club, masterminded the promotion from Step 5 in the club’s 150th anniversary season in 2022 and is now approaching 250 games at the helm.
And he says his side are just happy to enjoy the ride.
“We’ve started the season well, but I expect to get blown away towards the end of the season by the bigger teams like Chertsey, Leatherhead and Uxbridge,”
Howell told The NLP.
“This year no one has really grabbed it by the balls to say this is our league, whereas in previous years teams have run away with it.
“We’re enjoying the ride and trying to win the next game and see what happens. There is no pressure on us and we’re ahead of where we thought we’d be.
“We recently lost to Raynes Park Vale and Chertsey, although both were even games, the Chertsey game turned on a red-card, and Raynes Park we dominated the ball but they took their chances and defended well.”
After falling away to finish tenth last year, Howell has addressed the side’s problem scoring goals by signing prolific strikers – with this week the addition of former Ascot United marksman Brendan Matthew.
“Until the last six games of last season, we had one of the best defensive records in the league, but we didn’t score enough goals,” Howell explained.
“When we look at it now, we scored 50 goals all season last year, and we’re on 42 goals already this season.
Facilities
“We’ve just signed Brendan Matthew who won the FA Vase with Ascot, he’s already scored 21 goals this season and we signed Billy Montague who scored 18 goals for Chertsey last year.
“Our midfielder Jayden Thompson Brissett is the top scorer in the league and football league clubs are looking at him, he’s a talented youngster and we have some good kids.
“We’re a close group and the key is the lads are enjoying it.”
Currently groundsharing with Burnham – they call it the Burnhambeu – Southall have hopes of getting back into a home of their own some time soon.
“We don’t have our own facilities,” Howell said. “We ground share with Burnham and our average gate is 70 fans, because Southall is nowhere near Burnham.
“We rent half a pitch on Thursday night for training and play 7-a-side matches. The club lost the ground to flat developments back in 1992 and we’ve been renting grounds since.
“We’ve partnered with the Southall Lions junior section and have an U18s youth side. We have a meeting with Ealing council in January so we’re hopeful of coming back closer to Southall.”