THE WITTON ALBION COLUMN - By Paul Harper

WHAT is with the curse of the former player? Chances are, if you come up against a player who used to play for you, they’ll score and that was the case last Saturday in the form of Steven Tames.

Tames, now of Ashton United, enjoyed a really successfully time at Wincham Park, scoring a lot of goals, helping the club to promotion and winning a lot of admiration from the Witton faithful.

He’s a top player, particularly at this level, and unfortunately, he showed that against Albion at the weekend, scoring a vital equaliser on the stroke of half time.

It’s somewhat unsurprising, he’s a goalscorer, a fox in the box, it was just unfortunate that we were on the end of it on this occasion.

It’s amazing how many times a player scores against his former club. At least it feels that way! Maybe it’s because we’ve just experienced it but I think it happens quite often throughout the game.

You regularly watch Match of the Day and they discuss why players have not celebrated a goal because it was against a team they used to play for, so I’m sure it happens a fair bit.

The game was marred by a serious injury suffered by Will Jones and we send our best wishes to the striker for a full and speedy recovery.

Away from the first team, and it was nice to see our Academy team enjoy a good win last week, beating Belper Town 3-1.

A number of the players involved made the league’s Team of the Week, so congratulations to all involved. It has been a rather frustrating campaign for the Academy from an on-the-pitch perspective, as they’ve had a number of games postponed due to the weather and so it’s been difficult to put a consistent run together as the fixture list has been very stop-start for them.

For those who don’t know what the Academy is at the club, it is a Football and Education programme ran by the Northern Premier League which gives youngsters the chance to continue full-time education and work towards a BTEC in Sport, as well as train four times a week with UEFA-qualified coaches plus play weekly matches against Academies from other clubs.

For any Year 10 or 11s interested, the club is having trials for the September 2020 and 2021 intakes this Monday (17 February) at Sandbach Community Football Centre from 9:30-11:30am. Details on the official Witton Albion website.