Bartley felt 'Terry Staines spirit was with him' ahead of Marlow's play-off final victory

Captain Chris Ovenden celebrates Marlow’s second goal. Photo: Photo credit: Paul Merchant (MyMarlow)

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Marlow manager Mark Bartley said he felt like Terry Staines' spirit was with him on Sunday morning before he guided the Blues to promotion to step 3 in the Isthmian League South Central play-off final against Leatherhead.

Bartley said he woke up feeling like Marlow ‘couldn't lose' and felt a calmness as he prepared his players for the clash with the league's third placed side at Oak Tree Road.

Bartley and several of the club's players remarked afterwards that Sunday's 3-1 win over Leatherhead was 'for Terry'.

Terry Staines was the much-loved former chairman of the Blues who passed away following a short illness back in August last year. He had a long and significant association with the Oak Tree Road club, starting as a player in the early 70s before going on to be a committee member and the club's chairman.

Despite finishing a handful of points above them at the end of the season, the Blues had had the edge over Leatherhead in the side's two league games this season, winning the home clash 4-0 and 2-0 on the road. So, Bartley felt confident the visitors might experience some form of 'PTSD' should they fall behind in Sunday's final.

That's how things panned out in the second half with the visitors failing to make the most of their first half dominance and then finding themselves trailing when Jordi Ndozid headed home Josh Masters' corner in the 56th minute. Whether Leatherhead's visitors did experience a form of PTSD or shellshock is up for debate, but their promotion challenge certainly wilted in the next 10 minutes as Masters supplied assists for Louis Rogers and Dawid Rogalski to give the Blues an unassailable lead. To their credit Leatherhead kept going and reduced the arrears in the final minutes through Trevan Robinson's finish off the underside of the bar.

But Bartley knew his side were going up from the moment Rogalski's low volley found the back of the net and, judging from his post-match comments, knew it would be Marlow's day from the moment he woke up.

“I'll be honest with you, I woke up this morning (Sunday) and I just felt like Terry was there,” said Bartley. “I just felt like there was something different. It felt like we couldn't lose. It's hard to explain.

“I woke up and my missus will tell you, I was very relaxed and feeling like we couldn’t lose.

“I got to half-time and they’d had a couple of chances but nothing major. I’m just so pleased for the boys and the club as well.

“When I came here, they had been the whipping boys of step 4 and had been relegated. But in the last few years, people don’t want to come here. I knew that. Today, they (Leatherhead players/officials) said to me, ‘you haven’t cut the grass’. So, I said to them, ‘why would I cut the grass – I want to see if you really want to win it', and they didn’t, not as much as us.”

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Promotion is no less than the manager and his players deserve after a wonderful campaign. At times this season they looked like they'd take Chertsey Town all the way to the wire for the league title, and although that didn't quite happen, they were certainly the most consistent and exciting of the other sides in the division.

It's Bartley's second promotion since taking charge at Oak Tree Road more than a decade ago and in that time, he's gradually turned the Blues from relegation candidates to promotion contenders at step 4.

“We were the second-best team over the course of the season and for long spells I thought we were the best team in the league,” Bartley added.

“When we got into the play-offs this year, I just felt like we were better equipped for it.

“We've got goals at the front end of the team, and we know that if we stay in games, we will score.

“Again, it was a bit like that today. First today, they had a lot of the ball, but we didn't panic or worry. We knew we were going to create chances and when we did, we took them.

“I'm buzzing for these boys. All the work they've put in that people don't see. In the second half, I felt like we penned them in, and they couldn't get out.

“We spoke about the fact that they might be in a PTSD situation. We'd beaten them twice in the league this season and that wouldn't just disappear from them. I said at half-time that if we could get a goal, they will start to have relapses to what happened last time. They'd have been worried because they'd played us twice without scoring, so, when we did find the net, they'd have been thinking 'how are we going to score?'

“We'd also watched videos of them, so we knew that their defending from balls into their box wasn't great. We didn't do that enough in the first half, but in the second half we did get a few opportunities and the deliveries in were great.

“At 3-0 I was relaxed because there are only a handful of teams that have come here and scored three goals, let alone with all the emotions they had to deal with and with only 20 minutes to get them. I was relaxed, even with the mistake at the end. These boys have been fantastic, and they deserve it.

“I came to this club when they were relegated to step 5. All the previous squad disappearing. I said that my five-year plan was to get us promoted into step 4 and then consolidate. We did that. The period after that has been about trying to get ourselves up. Gradually we’ve been building and building without being one of the best resourced sides in the league. Today was the culmination of that. We deserved it. There’s a bit of emotion.”

Focus now shifts to next Wednesday evening’s (May 15) Berks & Bucks Senior Cup final against Reading u23s at Sandhurst Town's ground, where the Blues will look to go one better after last season's narrow defeat in the final to Bracknell.

After that Bartley will turn his attention to making the Blues as competitive as they possibly can be at the level above, most likely the Southern League Premier South.

“I think we’ll be in the Southern League Premier South,” he said.

“We’ll think about that after tonight, but a lot of this squad is really young, and they deserve their chance at the next level, and I’ll just try to add people who are really hungry and want to do it.

“I’m prepared for that challenge. We’ll enjoy Marlow tonight and I’m glad we’ve got the day off tomorrow because I’ll need it!”