Non-League Legend: Marvin Samuel (Part 4)
In parts one and two of our look back at Marvin Samuel’s career, we saw how we was a key figure at Harlow Town and Boreham Wood, reaching the semi finals of the FA Trophy and earning promotion with the latter.
In part three, we saw Marvin make his first foray into management, starting at Harlow Town, where he by then had legendary status.
Part four starts in summer 2011, with Samuel starting the first of his three seasons in charge at Hertford Town.
2011-12
Samuel started the 2011-12 season with Forest, and played in a number of pre-season friendlies, before falling off the radar somewhat.
In October 2011, he was announced manager of Hertford Town in the Spartan League, who at the time were facing a relegation battle of their own. Upon taking the job, he said “It’s a great opportunity. I don’t want to change the team too much. Obviously something has gone wrong between now and September and we need to fix it.”
As with his time at Harlow, his first game with Hertford ended in defeat – a 3-1 reverse against St Margaretsbury. However, not long later, he picked up his first win – a 2-1 defeat of Dunstable Town in the Spartan League Cup.
His former team-mate and non-league legend Chris Bangura was brought in at Hertford was part of a mini-revival, but Samuel himself was setting a leading example – at the other end of the pitch than what might usually be expected! In April 2011 he smashed in a hattrick against London Tigers, ensuring Hertford will finish a respectable 16th in the table – impressive after the situation Samuel came into salvage.
Speaking after the victory, he said: “In all honesty I couldn’t tell you what the goals were like – I had my eyes closed!”
“I’m pleased that I’m getting the goals, but I’m only playing because of our injury situation. The boys are really coming together at the moment and it’s making my job a lot easier.
“Everyone’s chipping in. [Dave] Hunt scored a hat-trick on Saturday, and since I made him captain everyone’s rallied around his leadership.
“The team has really stepped up to the plate. We’ve got three games left and we intend to win them all. We’ve achieved what we set out to do which was to stay in this league – and now we want to finish strongly so we can take that into the start of next season.”
2012-13
For all of Samuel’s optimism, there was a huge turnover in playing staff before the start of the 2012-13 season, with only three players remaining from the previous campaign.
The season started brightly, with a point against AFC Dunstable, but after that, mounting injuries and player turnover saw inconsistent results.
“We’ve got a lot of players out at the moment, but it’s up to the other players, who might have been watching a lot of football, to step up to the plate,” he said.
“We still need to get used to playing alongside each other and bringing what we do in training into matches.
Hertford lost 2-0 to Hadley in the Extra Preliminary Round of the FA Cup, but enjoyed a decent Vase run, eventually losing in the third round to Ampthill Town. This run equalled Hertford’s best ever run in the competition.
“It’s been a year of two halves,” Samuel told the Mercury at the end of 2012. “We did well to keep the team up in the second half of last season and get them into a safe mid-table position.
“This season we’ve had a nightmare with injuries and the team has underachieved.”
When asked for his highs and lows of Hertford’s 2012, the Blues boss picked out the side’s FA Vase run and the fans as his highlights.
“The fans were tremendous as they have been all season. I’m just disappointed that we couldn’t pay them back with performances they should expect from my teams.
“The lows have definitely been the injuries and the two hammerings from Oxhey Jets and Tring Athletic. They were terrible.”
As for players that have impressed Samuel this year, he picked out departed striker Billy Healey as well as the likes of Malachi Brissett, Michael Elliot, Seb Evans and Sean Stock, who the manager labelled as “good, loyal players”.
On 2013, Samuel was full of optimism and believes the best is yet to come for his injury-hit side.
“There’s no reason why we can’t get going again and look forward to the New Year.
“Let’s be realistic, we’re not a club that’s pushing for honours. We’re slowly getting local boys in and that is helping financially,” he said.
“We’re looking to kick on and finish in a mid-table position at the end of the season. That was our target at the start and has not changed.”
In February, controversy struck Hertford after goalkeeper Danny Sonner left following a dispute with the club’s Twitter feed.
The keeper was left livid after @HertfordTownFC described the first goal during last Tuesday’s defeat at Harefield United as “a cross from midfield ends up in top corner of goal. Keeper too small?”
Sonner, who claims his height is 176cm (5ft 9ins) on his myspace page, responded with a number of angry retorts from his feed, @DannySonner, later that night, including: “You lot need to sort yourselves out, call yourself fans yet a player goes out and represents you and you cane him for it.”
That brought a @HertfordTownFC reply of: “You should calm down Danny. It was one goal and a question about height that everyone is asking.”
Two days later and Sonner had quit the club, leaving boss Marvin Samuel a very disappointed man and bemoaning the power of Twitter.
“Losing Danny at this point is not a good thing for the team and the club as he was a part of the growing positive attitude of the team,” Samuel told the Mercury.
“I believe that Danny has found it hard to motivate himself at the level as only a season ago he was playing for Staines, but saying that he leaves us on the back of a Twitter message.
“This season I have been telling all of our players to stay off of Twitter. Now we lose a player for this reason. I hope a lesson has been learnt here and we can now move forward from this mess.”
In a tweet to the Mercury, Sonner claimed he had not left because of the social media mess, but was unavailable for further comment when contacted.
In April, three back to back wins and a draw saw Hertford safe from relegation for another season, but Samuel still had to respond to critisim from outside the club after he deliberately left his team a man down by taking off striker Enes Azemi to “stop him getting sent off”.
Due to injuries and suspensions, the Blues only had one substitute – Ray Tomkins – on Tuesday night at Ampthill Town. With Tomkins already used, Samuel still decided to take off Azemi late on.
The Blues were losing 3-0 at the time and managed to hit one back through Malachi Brissett.
Despite a fine unbeaten run, six wins and a draw in their previous seven games, Samuel drew criticism after the game with fans on Twitter questioning the decision.
One asked: “We went down to 10 men to save ourselves from going down to 10 men?”
Samuel explained to the Mercury: “Enes had picked up a silly yellow card and I felt he was going to get sent off.
“We would have had to pay a fine and the bottom line is that I’m the one who’ll get criticised for our disciplinary record.
“We probably played better with 10 men and won that period of the match 1-0.”
Samuel admitted he was unhappy that after such a fine run he was still coming under fire.
“I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said. “I know my job isn’t even stable. A lot of people have opinions and they don’t know anything about football.
His side did make the final of the Herts Charity Shield, but they were thrashed 4-0 by Oxhey Jets.
2013-14
There was talk at the start of the season that Samuel would have a Director of Football above him at Hertford, but those plans fell through – happily for him.
He did suffer an injury and had to undergo cruciate ligament surgery, meaning he wouldn’t be able to play for the first six or seven months of the season.
Pressure was beginning to mount on Samuel, and by the end of September, his time as Hertford boss was up.
The Blues boss left the club after a telephone conversation with chairman Peter Sinclair. Although it was labelled as a mutual agreement, Samuel was clearly disappointed that his time was up at Hertingfordbury Park.
“Peter rang me and it’s a mutual decision,” he told the Mercury. “I think they’d been discussing things at a committee level.
“For me it’s been an experience. I came in two years ago and the team were down the bottom and now I leave them in a mid-table position. For me that’s progress.
“I think it’s fair to say I’ve had my hands tied at times. It’s been hard.
“There’s no money, but they expect the club to be up near the top of the table, in the top eight.
“They’re a hard-working committee and they’re lovely people, but they’re not football people.”
Samuel joined the Blues in November 2011, with the club languishing at the bottom of the table.
In a statement, the club said: “Both the committee and Marvin believe that the start to the season has not been as hoped, and the time has come to start afresh with the majority of the season still to play for.
“The committee believe that although we have made improvements on the playing side, we have not progressed with as much impetus as expected after the excellent end to last season.
“Marvin’s determination and tenacity as a manager has not been without recognition at Hertford Town, and we at the club wish to thank him for his service over the past two years.
“The very fact that it is his, and our own high standards that have brought us to this position, is a mark of the character he has shown at the club.
“We wish Marvin all the best for the future, sure in the knowledge that he will find a new club with little difficulty.
“The club will announce the details of the new manager expediently, with an appointment that can build on the strong foundations we currently have existing at Hertingfordbury Park.
“In the immediate future, the caretaker manager will be our current youth manager, Martin Gutteridge. We wish him all the best of luck during this transitional period.”
By October, Samuel was back in playing action, signing for Ware in the Ryman League. In one of his first games for the Herts club, he drew 3-3 with Waltham Abbey, who he would soon join after a month with Ware.
He made his debut in a 5-4 win over Barkingside, and said “I feel I’ve still got a couple more seasons in me as a player at Ryman League level.
“Abbey are playing some excellent football – we just need to work on conceding fewer goals. The football the team play is beyond the level of the league we play in.
“I’m just hoping to be able to support Paul (Wickenden, the Abbey manager) as much as possible in going for a play-off push.
But age was beginning to take its toll on Samuel, and injuries around Christmas 2013 saw his playing time limited. In the new year he lost against both his former sides, Harlow and Ware – despite scoring against the latter.
