AFC Bournemouth
While lifting the trophy on the pitch at the Millennium Stadium made for an achievement still celebrated today, Sean O’Driscoll says the squad’s coaching legacy gives him the most pleasure from the triumph.
A fluid attacking display saw AFC Bournemouth beat Lincoln City 5-2 in the Division Three play-off final 17 years ago today, in a season where the Cherries had retained their attractive style despite the often-physical approach of their rivals.
The game is being shown in full today from 3pm as the latest match to get the Cherries Repicked treatment.
While it was goals from Steve Fletcher, Carl Fletcher (2), Stephen Purches and Garreth O’Connor that grabbed the headlines on the day, looking back at the team sheet it is now also the large number of post-playing careers in the Cherries line-up that stands out.
No fewer than eight of the Cherries’ squad members have gone on to have coaching careers with the club, while others, such as Wade Elliott and Neil Young have gone on to forge successful coaching careers elsewhere in the game.
“I’m glad to see so many players still there at the club,” said O’Driscoll in conversation with afcb.co.uk earlier this week.
“That the players have largely gone on to become coaches probably gives me the most pleasure nowadays, to see so many of the players getting the opportunity to stay in football and do really well.
“On top of that, obviously Eddie was my youth team captain. I think it comes off the back of trying to play and giving the players the freedom to make decisions and a bit more time in a time where it was all very much coach and manager led.
“I think that stood them in good stead for the way they’ve approached their own coaching and management careers.
“Stephen Purches and I have kept in touch through his coaching and I believe he’s doing really well at Bournemouth.”
As well as looking to give the players the tools they would later use as coaches, O’Driscoll also stuck to a philosophy of attractive football when such an approach was thought to be unwise in the fourth tier.
O’Driscoll explained: “We suffered from that malaise that was in football at that time that you couldn’t pass the ball if you were in the lower divisions, it was as if that was a foolish way to try and play.
“We were, maybe not derided, but I think people thought it was not the right way to go.
“That’s the way I wanted to play, and my coaching philosophy is about understanding responsibility and trying to get the players to understand rather than be coach-led on the pitch where you can’t really have much influence.
“As a player I wasn’t the greatest player in the world but I liked that kind of play.
“We were pragmatic, we had strength in the team and the players that we could get were technically always very good but quite small, because in that day and age people wanted big, powerful, strong players and the technical players got left a little bit, so we had a nice little niche of trying to attract the technical players.
“It was just the time, I think. Maybe we were ahead of our time, I don’t know, but it was always the case that if we didn’t get a result that would be thrown at us, ‘You can’t pass your way out of Division Three’. That suited the way we played and the way we trained.
“Football, like everything else, has come full circle and teams in that division now like Crewe and Swindon play very attractive football.”
