Sam Phillips Interview (20/02/09)

Interview by Matt Harris

Sam Phillips has continued to play a solid role in the Tunbridge Wells’ midfield over the course of the season racking up 21 appearances (16 starts) to date and hitting three goals - including one in last Saturday’s draw at Culverden with Deal Town. Last season saw Phillips pick up the Supporter's and Manager's Player of the Year award, and earned Phillips recognition as one of the Manager’s three most improved players.

That improvement was expected to be infectious. Publicly, The Wells set their sight on a top-six position in the Kent League, following on from last season’s hard-earned mid-table finish. But Phillips’ ambitions stretch further.

“If the season finished today I would not be satisfied with how it has gone,” he told www.tunbridgewellsfc.co.uk. “I’m not saying it has not been a success as we are currently in the ‘top six’ - so some would say if it did end now, we would have achieved the position the club set out to achieve. But we have all set our standards higher after the last half of last season, so we know we can compete with the best in the league.

“We have put in some great performances at times and other times have not played to our potential, but I feel the best of the team is still to come. Who knows what can happen in the next couple of months? We most certainly don’t want to finish any lower than we are currently placed (fifth). I believe everyone involved with the club is looking to finish higher up the league table and aiming for the best league position the club has had for many years.”

Phillips will have been a toddler the last time Tunbridge Wells finished as high as fifth back in 1986 - and that came the year after the Kent League Championship was won in 1984/85 - the season that Phillips was born. Fast-forward 24 years, and Tunbridge Wells are well positioned to attack the current pace-setters Hythe Town. How effective that attack is will depend on how quickly consistency can be achieved in league results - something Phillips is mindful of.

“Our recent mixed bag of results is not so much a worry to us, but a frustration. Where we should be picking up points, we have thrown a number of points away,” he explains.

The inconsistency has led many to single out Hythe and Holmesdale as the two most likely Kent League winners for Season 2008/09 - not that predictions mean much to Phillips or his team mates.

“Are people writing us off?” he asked. “I don’t think it effects us to be honest. We know what we want to achieve this year, and we now know exactly what needs to be done. But at the moment there are about six teams that could win this league and we intend to be in the mix all the way to last game of the season. That means we just take each game as it comes.

“There is a real desire amongst the squad at the moment to get back to basics and work hard as a team, both in training and on match days to achieve something this year. Mike (Robbins) has spoken about getting back to basics a lot recently. He and Martin (Larkin) sat us down a couple weeks back after a training session and we all had a good chat. Since then we have trained very hard and I think that showed in the performance on Saturday.

“Although the result was not what we wanted I think the performance deserved all three points. The conditions were not the best and the pitch started to cut up badly as the game went on, but we got together and just said ‘it’s days like today where we just have to work hard for each other and carve out the performance’. Considering the three week spell with no match leading up to the Deal game, I think we did extremely well in the end,” he added.

Particularly interesting to note of last week’s game was both goals coming from midfield - something not seen as often as it was towards the tail end of last season. Whether this is an early showing of the ‘getting back to basics’ campaign, and a sign of things to come, in which - as displayed towards the end of last season - there are multiple threats posed around the pitch for the opposition to worry about is something Phillips believes only time will reveal.

“It’s hard to say, to be honest, but last Saturday the whole midfield seemed to link well with the two strikers, which allowed us to get forward into those goalscoring positions. Both goals were great team goals, and we moved the ball around really nicely.

“Personally, in terms of scoring goals I would like to grab a few more before the end of the season without a doubt [Phillips’ tally was six last year]. But a target for the rest of the season is again to take each game as it comes and do what we have to do to get as many points as we can. We have some very tough games coming up, and I believe the best is to come from the whole squad,” he reiterated.

And Phillips' comments echo those of his manager Mike Robbins’ recent interview where he went on record to say that he thought his side had enough quality to finish the season strongly.

“I think one thing that will work in our favour is the team spirit that we have and the work ethic,” Phillips added. “We have a good balance of flare players and hard working players throughout the squad, very similar to the last half of last season.

“As a matter of fact there are actually only one or two different faces in the squad from around the same time last season. We know what can be achieved through hard work as we showed last year, so I think this will be the essential to the team for the next few months,” he concluded. “It is the basis both for training and on the pitch.”