Returning winger Trey Masikini has fallen in love with the club culture at Corinthian-Casuals and is at his happiest playing among friends...

Interview by Dominic Bliss
Images by Stuart Tree

Trey, you came back to Casuals a month or so into the season after absolutely terrorising us with Leatherhead during a pre-season friendly. How did your return to the club come about?

Before I re-signed for Leatherhead in the summer, I had a conversation with Mu about signing here in pre-season because I didn’t know what was going on at Leatherhead at the time after our manager got sacked when we’d just had a play-off run. I didn’t know if the new manager there had anyone in their plans. Mu said he wanted to get me in at that time, but I said I owed it to my new manager to have a conversation with him first.

I initially re-signed for Leatherhead because the new manager had played against me and said, “I want you to stay.”

Once the season started, a seven-dayer came in and, at the time, it wasn’t the best of times at Leatherhead, where we were losing a lot, and I knew a lot of the boys in this Casuals team already, so I knew I would be coming into a good environment.

It just made so much sense. I had played with Mu in my first time at Casuals, when we were in the Isthmian Prem, so he just convinced me.

How important is it to play alongside friends and to enjoy your football when you are playing at this level of the game?

It’s massive. I’ve always thought you do better in teams where you’ve got togetherness. You have to have that element of seriousness as well, where you all have the same objective, whether it be to win the league or get promoted. I feel like it’s much easier to speak your true feelings to someone that you know, compared to someone where you might think, “I don’t know him like that, I don’t know how to speak to him.”

Let’s say I’m talking to Hak on the pitch. I might say something like, “Hak, sharpen up!” But it might have a little swear word or something in it!

You can’t talk to Hak like that – he’s delicate!

No! Everyone gets Hak wrong, you know. Hak’s not delicate! If I’m having a bad game, you listen to the way Hak speaks to me… eeesh!
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No, I’m just using that as an example, though. This year, it’s a good environment. You’ll run harder for your friends, or for someone you know, than you would for a complete stranger that you don’t know from Adam.

The fans were pleased to see you return. What do you make of this club and the community we’ve got here?

I love Casuals. As non-league clubs go, this is probably the biggest I’ve been at, as in the following, the setup and the overall environment. With the Brazil link, the fan base is enormous.

Then there’s the management group as well. The fans and the people behind closed doors are what keep the place running. I’ve been at clubs where it’s been a mess, where they had no fans and the board was all over the place. Alongside one other club, Casuals is easily the most efficient that I’ve been at, with the biggest fan base. I’ve never seen a better fan base in non-league than Corinthian-Casuals. I have Brazilians in my DMs on Instagram wishing me good luck, and because they’re speaking in Portuguese, I’m having to go and copy and paste what they say into Google Translate!

What is your football background?

I spent a year as a schoolboy at Crystal Palace and then I went into Sunday football. From 16, I did a year with Kinetic Academy and when we went into Under-18s football, I was at Dartford.

From there, I did different loans to places like Crowborough and Langley Wanderers, just as a kid trying to get men’s football because Dartford were in the Conference Prem.
I then signed for Burgess Hill and went to Carshalton from there, before coming to Casuals the first time two years ago when Tony Reid was the manager. When I left Casuals, I signed for Merstham, then I went to Leatherhead before coming back here.

Would you like to settle at a club like this and make your name here?

Yeah, 100 per cent because the fans here are great and I always wanted to settle somewhere and really have a go. To be fair, I want to settle at Casuals and help push them to where they need to be. This club’s following and everything about it is not Step 5 – we all know that. But it is where it is right now and I would love to stamp my legacy here, especially seeing the project that Mu’s got going on. It’s refreshing, because I know the club’s had some problems and now it’s like a whole new rebuild.
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Richard Blackwell joined the club as part of Mu Maan’s coaching staff in the summer and has already taken to the pitch at centre-back on several occasions. We caught up with him to talk about falling back in love with football as he works alongside his boyhood friends at a club like no other…

Richard, let’s start by talking about how you got involved at the club this summer.

I’ve known Mu and Mo since before our football days. We actually used to go to the same primary and secondary school and lived roughly in the same area – I lived in Fulham; they lived in Chelsea. We played football together on Sundays growing up and I played semi-pro with Mo at Sutton United, from youth to reserves to first team. I didn’t get the opportunity to play with Mu at that level, partly because I had to retire at 24 because of a really bad knee injury, but I played with him regularly on Sundays, so I knew what he was about and his attitude towards football.

I work with them both as well, at Skip It, so when Mu originally told me he was going to go for the Corinthian-Casuals job, he asked if I’d be interested in coming along if he got it. I’ve been doing some coaching with Carshalton Athletic kids and I’d been out of the semi-pro game for quite a while, so I thought it sounded good.

A couple of months went by and then we were at a family gathering – one of Mo’s daughters’ holy communion – and Mu came up and said it was progressing quite well and that he’d had more conversations about it. He said, “Are you really interested?”

“Yes Mu, I’m interested!”

The closer it came and the more confident he was that he was going to get the job, he then said, “Right, are we doing it?” We looked at each other and smiled. “Yeah, let’s go for it!”

From there, it got busy, didn’t it? We were down the club, doing bits and pieces, getting to know Gabs as I didn’t know him beforehand, and that’s how it ended up working out!

How much have you enjoyed your first few months here?

I was a bit apprehensive about it because I was quite confident in my ability when I was playing, and from a coaching point of view as well, even though I’d not really got any experience in the men’s game. I’d been around good managers in the past and in the three years I’ve been coaching the young boys at Carshalton, it’s been second nature to me, it’s been comfortable. I was a captain as well, so I’ve found it quite easy to get my point across.

My last big playing gig was with Croydon Athletic and we won the Ryman South. It had the same sort of feel as what we’ve got at Corinthian-Casuals, so it was very community based, the people were very friendly and so I see similar things here. The one thing I can categorically say is that I’ve never played against or been a part of a team where the fans are so into it as they are here. For that many people to come away to Jersey when they’ve probably got family and work commitments too, is incredible. A lot of players see that and it’s why we try and make sure that, after every game – win, lose or draw – we come over to thank the fans. After the Cobham game, when we were really poor, for the first time I felt a little bit embarrassed, but you still feel obliged to go over because without the fans it wouldn’t be the same. It makes it feel more like a professional club for the players and I’m buzzing about it. The fans were great at Knaphill in the rain and, for that Cobham game, with the Fiel Londres there, it was unreal. To have that atmosphere at Combined Counties level is different to anywhere else.

Matt Kellett-Smith returned to Corinthian-Casuals with a win on Saturday, as part of a defensive line that Mu Maan described as being “the most solid we’ve looked this season.”

The 30-year-old has come back to a much-changed dressing room, but it was the one remaining team-mate from his previous spell here – Shea Cascoe-Rogers – who scored our winning goal as we netted twice in the last 10 minutes to beat Abbey Rangers 2-1.

Kellett-Smith was a regular at centre-back under Andy Gray last season, before departing the club shortly after Paul Barnes’ arrival in the dugout midway through the campaign. A commanding aerial presence, and a vocal player, he was one of the better performers during a tough spell for the club and was missed when he moved on. So it was a boost to see him at the heart of our defence again on Saturday, winning headers and cajoling his team-mates. We grabbed him for a few words as he left the pitch with three points on his second Casuals debut.

“Yeah, it was good, mate,” he said of the experience. “I always thought that we’d get something out of the game. We made some silly mistakes at the start but then, in the second half, I always felt we would get back into it, and it was a good game.
“Shea came off the bench and looked really sharp, and the lads up top did well in the second half, so we deserved it in the end.”

His return to the club last week was convenient for all parties as we were looking for a centre-half and he was looking for more game time.

“I was at Uxbridge at the start of the season, and it didn’t go too well there – I had to leave because of game time. Then one of my friends told me to come to Fleet Town but they didn’t really play me, so I spoke to Brian [Adamson] and he said to come down, and it’s been good.”

Kellett-Smith arrived as we went in search of our first victory in nine games, and he noticed that Mu Maan’s focus was clear in the build-up to Saturday’s encounter with a team we were looking to leapfrog.

“He spoke about the last couple of results and the fact that we haven’t kept a clean sheet yet,” Matt revealed. “Obviously, it’s a shame we didn’t keep one in this game either but he just said go out there and make sure we win this one – keep digging and digging and get the result. That’s what we did.”

After one training session and one match, the newly returned centre-back admits he has been impressed by the standard of the side this season and is looking forward to the challenge ahead for the remainder of the season.
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“I’m positive, to be honest,” he told us. “Even when I went training for the first time last Thursday, I did think we looked more sharp. In this league, if we play like we did in the second half against Abbey, I think we’ll get a lot of results.”