December Club of the Month

December Club of the Month award from Wessex League Secretary John Gorman

Club of the Month

Eight years ago in December 2008, Alton Town, under the management of Clive Ventham, won the Wessex League Manager of the Month, and a youthful Mark Corbett was Player of the Month. A prophetic moment in that Mark has been appointed manager from next season when he takes over from Clive who stepped in to look after things for the rest of this season after manager Michael Charles moved on.

Mark Corbett and a youthful looking Clive Ventham[December 2008]

Fast forward eight years to December 2016 and once again under the Management of Clive Ventham, ably assisted by Kevin Beaumont, Sean Hayes and Glenn Westwood, and following an unbeaten December, Alton have been awarded The Sydenhams Wessex League Division One Club of the Month award for December.

This follows a month of four games that all resulted in victories, scoring 18 goals and only conceding 4. The matches were as follows:-
New Milton Town – home won 7-0
Shaftesbury – home won 1-0
Tadley Calleva – away won 6-3
Fleet Spurs – home won 4-1

The goals have been shared round, Scott Sanderson[6], Dec Shuttleworth[3], Mitch Parker[2], Henry Fox[2], Sean Hayes[2] and Taylor Watts, Ryan Bunney and Callum Burch with one each.

This is all the more pleasing in the fact that we had lost 0-6 away to Shaftesbury earlier in the season, and nobody can remember the last time we came away from Tadley with anything other than a defeat.

In fact since we lost to Shaftesbury on the 15th October, we have played 11 league games winning 9 and losing 2, and for one of the losses we missed an 85th minute penalty, which would have drawn us level.

Congratulations all round!