Toolstation NCEL Premier Division
Mark Pitts and Simon Portrey have taken charge of Goole AFC as joint managers as Lutel James has stepped down due to new football commitments involving the Caribbean Islands.
However, James is sticking around and will act as a consultant to the new first team bosses and the club’s chairman Alan Wilson.
Pitts and Portrey were assistants to James and his former joint boss Les Nelson who resigned a few weeks ago. Pitts is a multiple West Yorkshire League Premier Division title winner as the former Carlton Athletic manager while Portrey, a professional at Ipswich Town in 1990s in his younger days, used to manage Aberford Albion.
“Simon and Mark are going to be taking up the manager’s job as I’ve been offered a job which I’ve been working on for a while which involves the Caribbean Islands and recruiting players and bringing them across to the UK,” James told Non League Yorkshire.
“Mark and Si ready to step up and they are more than keen. It hasn’t been an overnight thing because for the last three or four weeks there has been intense discussions about how we plan that transition.
“There’s been no ‘see you later’ because I have too much respect for the people at the club, the players and for Si and Pittsy. There needs to be a transition model. I could have taken the easy option when Les moved on and said it is time for me to do that as well.
“The team needs reinforcements and I’m still going to help Si and Pittsy out with recruitment of additional players – whether that’s from pro clubs or other clubs.
“(Stepping down) almost gives my additional time to access players. We’ve talked today about possibly needing a left-back and it something I am going to look at. We’ve already identified a centre-half so there’s things already happening. It is not like we have gone to sleep in the midst of all this. There’s been constant discussions.
“Equally it is a platform where younger players can do well. Anees has already done well. Jayden has come in and done well. These were all younger players who have held their own. I’m interested in bringing in young players to give them the chance to play men’s football.”
Former Guiseley and Bury striker James predicts Goole can have an exciting future off-the-field.
Goole chairman Mr Wilson has an extremely successful advisor in James. James has worked for decades in community work and has been hailed for his youth projects in Chapeltown, a deprived area of Leeds.
“I’m still going to help Alan build an infrastructure of a scholarship framework and an under 23s so they have local kids swing balling into the first team rather than having players piling in,” he said.
“I’ve committed to supporting that structure and there’s some good people at Goole and it is going in a positive direction.
“I think Goole itself, there needs to be a massive amount of income generated and they need to look at employability and socio-economic things around the area. So can the club through football provide more to bring in more of a resource around a training arm to have more resource for the first team? I think the model can work.
“Let me tell you something; Goole has got absolutely massive potential. What they need to do is clarify what the business model looks like? What the infrastructure looks like? They need to understand that it needs to be a community-led club and it needs to be a bottom up approach.
“It is not based on kids coming in and p***ing off for a few quid elsewhere. It doesn’t work. I have more than enough experience with the things we’ve already built to know how to do that. That’s my niche area.
“The first aim has to be a 16 to 19-year-olds BTEC course and an under 23s which will generate money from the Government for the qualifications and it will also generate money in the fact that if you have players coming through, I bet they won’t cost as much as some players who come through the front gate.
“There’ll be a full comprehensive programme which will income generate and takes Goole to another level which will sustain the first team. We will then look at jobs and employability which will bring in additional income.
“We’re targeting 2021 as the start of a 16 to 19-year-old programme and in two years’ time the club be transformed, quite easily.
“I know this area (of work) like the back of my hand. What I’m doing from a consultant point of view, I’m making sure it is done effectively and I leave a legacy of a strong and stable infrastructure which sustains the future of Goole.
“It is great looking at five magic moments because we have signed five new players, but what do you do after that ? You can see massive potential and a massive resource. The catchment area is massive. It is a sleeping giant.”
The opportunity which has taken him away from the Goole manager’s job is through his GWSM company which works closely with clubs and national teams in the Caribbean Islands.
James represented St Kitts and Nevis twice during his playing career and one aspect of his work is opening the door for UK based Non League footballers to play International football if they qualify for a national team of one of the Caribbean Islands nations
“There’s players at clubs across the country in Non League who don’t get the opportunity to play National team football,” he said.
“For me it is big thing for a lot of people. There’s a lot of Caribbean players within Non League football. You’ve had Patrice Liburd play for St Kitts where I went with Ces Podd. You’ve had Des Hazel do it. Multiple players have done it.
“For me Non League players need those opportunities because some of them may have missed out on league football. I think there’ll be more opportunities because I’m flagging up players (from this country) to countries.
“There’s never been someone in the middle pointing the Islands or players in the right direction.”
But the main crux of the opportunity is trying to bring players over to the UK and hopefully secure them contracts with professional clubs. At the same time help improve the standard of coaching over in the Caribbean.
“I have been doing it for a number of years and I can’t come away from it,” he said.
“It is a massive market and this is going to be a big opportunity because all the big clubs are trying to get across the islands to try and be in command and control of bringing players across.
“The islands have never come together in this way. For example, there’s a couple of countries where their under 16s haven’t lost in three years and I’ll be getting their squads coming over here. When I train and assess them, if there is a couple of players I flag up then they’ll be going to teams across the country.
“The islands have been tapped before, but not in a structured way. You have the likes of Jamaica, Trinidad, St Kitts, all the islands doing it in a structured manner. Before it was always someone doing a bit here and a bit there and it has never worked. There has never been a sustainable plan. It has always been a hit and run like ‘give them a few balls, do a few training sessions’ and leave after three months.
“What I’ve been doing is working on a programme for the last two years and we’re already running a full-time scholarship model and then bringing players across from other countries. But not on this scale because this takes it to another level because you’re incorporating all Caribbean Islands.
“We’ve brought players over from India and East Bengal and other places, but this is more focussed on the Caribbean Islands. I’ve pulled together with loads of technical directors in the Caribbean Islands who have signed up to this model because the access routes in the UK have always been a bit willy-nilly and disorganised. This will deal with visas, framework, education and when they come over here they’ll access clubs in a formal way.
“One of the key links is with Ces Podd who used to play for Bradford City and is in St Lucia.”
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams. As we slowly return to ‘action’, our work will play an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
Like most organisations, we have been affected financially by the Coronavirus and because of the cancelled Lucille Rollinson Memorial Tournament, we are down on projected income for the year and we have incurred losses in the last few months.
We have not been hit as badly as other organisations, but we do need raise £2000 to put us back at the level we were at in mid-March and enable us to make a difference once again to our players’ lives in the future, without having financial worries. Several of our players are suffering from effects of the lockdown and we are determined to be in the strongest position possible to provide services for them.
Any amount raised above £2000 will be put towards new projects (when the world returns to normal) designed to further benefit people with disabilities and learning difficulties. You can learn more about the organisation HERE and on our Facebook page.
Watch the video below to see highlights from our three years as an organisation. The video was produced for our players at the end of March to remind them of good memories from the last three years.