By Dominic Bliss
Image: Scott White
Feel-good stories tend to be thin on the ground at a team entrenched in a relegation battle, but there’s no doubt that some of the new additions to the squad have injected a sense of positivity and belief into the Corinthian-Casuals side this past week.
Among the arrivals is Jared Myers, a 19-year-old winger who signed from Step 5 club Fleet Town last Monday after impressing Justin Fevrier and his coaching staff during a trial.
The following day, he made his first appearance for Casuals as a substitute against Horsham, coming on just before the hour mark and offering a different kind of threat for us with his darting runs on the wing. He was rewarded for his hard work and persistence with a goal on debut, and looked dangerous once again when he came off the bench against Hastings United on Saturday.
“It’s been good,” he says of his progress from trialist to first-team player. “There was a lot of boys on trial, so we had a trial game and obviously I impressed in that because the manager put me in the squad, and it was good to get a goal on my debut as well. I am a lively player, I like to get on the ball and drive, and dribble at players, try and take them on, just so I can get us going forward. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t start on Saturday because I fractured my finger, but it’s good to be playing games at a higher level and hopefully I can continue, push into the starting line-up and keep scoring and assisting.”
Myers has been impressed by the club’s approach to the game, not to mention our footballing heritage, which he quickly read up on after he signed.
“It’s a big club!” he says. “I was reading about the history and how it was the first football super-club, and I see there’s a good link with Brazil as well, so it’s really interesting.”
He certainly has pedigree. His father, Andy, was a Premier League footballer, most notably for Chelsea, where he won the FA Cup in 1997 and the European Cup Winners’ Cup the following year. Those were exciting days at Stamford Bridge, with the likes of Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli and Gianfranco Zola making the Blues one of the most watchable teams in Europe. Andy was a rapid defender in that side – stepping in at full-back or centre-back – as one of a handful of homegrown players who kept the local identity strong in a cosmopolitan team. More recently, he has coached Chelsea’s Under-23s and currently mentors the club’s players who are out on loan.
“It’s very good to have someone like him to learn from,” says Jared. “He’s very harsh on me and my brothers because he wants us to do our best, and he keeps it real for us. Just to have someone coming from a prestigious football background, as a player and coach, is very helpful. Out of my brothers, I’d say I’m the one that’s inherited all the pace, so that’s a good thing!”
Andy was stood behind the goal last Tuesday night, when Jared used that pace to score an 88th minute equaliser against Horsham on his debut, before being mobbed by the fans. Casuals were a goal down with time running out, when Myers kept chasing what looked like a lost cause, pursuing a long ball that was bouncing through to Horsham goalkeeper, Taylor Seymour. When the former Casuals custodian let the ball squirm free under pressure, Myers was waiting to poke it round him and roll it into the net.
“In football, you’ve always got to gamble,” he says. “I gambled on the keeper making a mistake, which he did, and it dropped to me in the right place at the right time.”
That game ended in bitter disappointment for us when Horsham recovered to score a winner in the 93rd minute, but Myers injected energy into our game again when he came off the bench in Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to Hastings United. On this occasion, there was no goal, but Casuals created enough openings to get back in the game in the second half.
“To be fair, we had a lot of chances that we should have taken and their keeper made some good saves,” says Myers, “but that’s the way football turns – sometimes you can be unlucky, and if we keep playing like that, hopefully we can get the win next time.
“We saw big improvements from the last game, so I feel like the new boys just getting in – including myself – will gel together and create even more chances. Hopefully next time, we’ll take them.”
That next game is tomorrow night, when Hornchurch come to Tolworth for our third home game in eight days. Despite the run Casuals are one right now, it feels like this team is very close to getting it right and a positive result against the league’s third-placed side would go a long way to giving them the belief that they can stay in this division.
“It would be big,” says Myers. “I think all we need is the one result and then we’ll start picking up more from there, then keep moving on with the positives. The only way is up if we get a result in this game.”