THE 1874 COLUMN – By Matthew Waters

OVER the past seven weeks our YouTube series 1874 At Home has connected our fans and wider followers of the club to the players and management, creating content they can enjoy during lockdown.

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking to the man who took on the mammoth task of being our first manager, Ian Street.

When talking to Ian, it was abundantly clear that after speaking to our late Chairman Paul Stockton, Ian decided that he wanted to be the man to take 1874 forward.

He said: “I ended up mulling over the idea so I decided to ring Paul. He spoke to me like I was his best buddy and he’d known me for ages and he didn’t too. I got off the phone and thought what a fantastic person Paul was, it made me think I have to be the man to do this and take 1874 forward.”

Street, who guided us to winning the Mid Cheshire Cup against Witton Albion, believes managing 1874 was ‘the best time of his footballing life’.

He added: “It was the best four seasons of my life and it was the best time of my footballing life. It was an exciting project 1874 and I only had one opportunity to do it, I had to do it right and I wouldn’t do anything differently. The players who joined the club had to be a certain type of player to match the ethos of the club, they had to be 100 per cent committed and nothing less.”

Ian ended his time at 1874 with a win percentage of 62.24 per cent, and one of the reasons we won a lot of games was due to the relationship between Mike Brandon and Matty Beadle.

When talking about their partnership, he said: “They were both very similar players and complimented each other as Brandon was getting older. The idea was to play Mike Brandon slightly deeper so he could hold the ball up and things just came naturally to him and there’s something about Mike that just knew football and Beads latched onto it and it worked excellently.”

During the 2016/17 season Ian brought in our current co-manager Wayne Goodison as first team coach. One of the reasons he did this was because of how highly the players spoke of him.

He continued: “I was only going to manage one more season at most for the club, so the idea was that Paul Bowyer would take over, and we initially brought Wayne in to help Paul. I had personal issues and my time came to an end earlier than expected, but Wayne is a top coach, his sessions are fantastic and anyone has seen them knows how talented he is. I’m so pleased to see how well him and Paul are doing.”

I think I speak for every 1874 fan when I say that Ian did a superb job forming our initial squad and setting the standard for the club’s future making sure we play football in the right way.