TLA Sport

with Roger Jackson Please email full details to sport@thelocalanswer.co.uk

Stonehouse Town are an ambitious football club.

Next year is their 125th anniversary but while they are proud of their history, they are looking to the future with optimism.

“Stonehouse were the biggest club in the Stroud area in the 70s,” said chairman Nigel Sanders. “We’re a sleeping giant and we’re trying to kick the hell out of it to try to wake it up.”

Forest Green Rovers, who have enjoyed such a phenomenal rise in recent times, are obviously the top club in the area these days, but it’s fair to say that things seem to be moving in the right direction at Stonehouse too.

“The aim is to go as high as we can,” said Sanders, who has been chairman for the past seven or eight years.

“The sky is the limit, there’s a lot to look forward to. My aim for the next five years is to get into the Southern League.”

The club currently play in Division One of the Hellenic League so that means they would need two promotions, but that is something that Sanders believes is achievable.

“Our 2nd team play in Division One of the Northern Senior League, which was where our 1st team were playing when I took over as chairman,” said Sanders.

The club’s flagship team are in their fourth season in the Hellenic League and Sanders is hoping that new manager Craig Robinson can work some magic as they look to progress through the divisions.

Robinson took over as boss five games into the current league campaign. He replaced former Cheltenham Town and Portsmouth midfielder Chris Burns and although this is his

Stonehouse Town play in Division One of the Hellenic League first job as the main man in adult football, he knows exactly what he is about.

“It’s very much a project that my coaching staff and I have taken on,” said the 30-year-old.

“We’re trying to change the whole culture, philosophy and playing style of the club. It’s not a quick fix.

“We are trying to be more professional, we train twice a week, we want to change the mentality of the group. We’re trying to turn them into a team to compete in the division and one that will be at the top end of the division next season.”

And Robinson, who is assisted by Jason Radford, has a clear idea on how he wants his team to play.

“A high pressing, possessionbased, positional-based style of football,” he said.

That fits in very much with the wishes of his chairman, who added: “If we play attractive football people will come to watch us.”

Stonehouse currently get crowds of about 75 at the Ben’s Takeaway Stadium, but Sanders hopes that a bit of success coupled with some good football could see them get crowds of 200 to 300. The club also run a 3rd team who play in Stroud League Division Four, a veterans’ team and six or seven youth teams, so there is an awful lot of football being played there. There’s also an awful lot going on off the pitch too, with the club having had new floodlights installed three years ago while a new, permanent prefab hospitality area should be open for business in the third week of December. Sanders, a catering engineer, is hoping that the club’s supporters will be toasting plenty of wins in the new hospitality unit and in Robinson he thinks he’s got the right man to get those wins. “He’s very organised,” said Sanders, “and he’s got good connections with a lot of youth players.” That’s certainly true because Robinson, a self-employed gardener and tree surgeon who lives in Cheltenham, was in charge of Gloucester City’s under-18s and under-21s for four years.