Salhouse History
31 Oct 2007

The beginning and 2002/2003 4B Season

The great Salhouse was formed in the summer of 2002-2003 under the influential guidance of Neil Woolner and Mark Aimes who had mutually agreed to leave Hillside old boys, in division 1B at the time. At that time a tall lad by the name of Mantelli was seeking a way out of the Cauldron that is the Crusader league playing for a rough Heartsease team. The skills learned in this league would become a great asset to Salhouse’s play in the future. Along with Mantelli came the baggage of a young chap called Lee Chittock. Standing in Tesco one day serving the 1 hour photos, a then fit and only on 15 fags a day, Neil Woolner approached Mantelli complaining about his photos, one thing led to another and the next week Mantelli and the boy Chittock were playing in a friendly for the Salhousians. The rest as they say is history. In this first season, in the depths of division 4B, Salhouse managed to gain promotion by finishing 4th due to a team dropping out in the league above. Cheap promotion I know, but Neil had installed the Motto “be Cheap when you can” so we took the promotion. Unfortunately, Chocksy has taken this Motto into every aspect of his life!
Along the way we managed to recruit the now manager Daniel Sexton who had returned from a Soccer Camp in the US, managing to bag a brace of goals earning him Managers Player of the season. Also recruited in this season was the great Philly Boy Wright, also leaving Hillside to join. Mantelli picked up the Players Player of the season by playing every minute of all 24 games, a feat that has not yet been reproduced by anyone.

2003/2004 3B season

A new season brought new players for the higher standard of Division 3B. During this season we gained a great and ever present goal machine Oliver Harper. Recruited through the Lee Chittock JJB sports academy. At first Oliver began his career as a right winger as Neil could sense that the title of top goal scorer was under threat. This was soon put to one side for the greater good. The season also saw the introduction of the ever present non goal scoring player Chris “FAT KNEES” Newton, mainly due to lack of players. Since joining Fat Knees has established himself as the butt of every joke until Neil Thomson joined in 2007 (more on this later). With these new players, a new dawn was on the horizon and we again gained promotion to Division 2B by finishing 4th with another cheap promotion as other teams dropped out of the league above. This season also saw the introduction of Martin Woolner.

2004/2005 2B Season

2B season was a hard levelling out process for the Salhousians. The loss of Chocksy half way through this season came as a great blow to the nation of Australia and boosted our chances of promotion. The season itself was quite unsettled and ended in us finishing 6th, a far cry from our last two promotions.
Towards the end of this season saw the beginning of the Frettenham revolution. With Frettenham folding in Division 1A, came a fresh and eager Kevin Breeze. He had an instant impact scoring 3 goals in 3 games all of which were outside the box.

2005/2006 2B Season

The start of the this season saw the introduction of Robbie Castle, present team captain, another player gained from the fall of Frettenham. Robbie soon settled into a season at right-back, his favoured position because that’s the first place the sun hits when it comes up on the Sahouse pitch in the winter months. The end of this season saw the introduction of Mr Harris. Fresh from his trip around the world. Harris brought a new dynamic to the team enlightening us with the Peter Beardsley Step over’s and twinkle toed assaults on the opposition. It also saw the beginning of a radical idea of a warm up and warm down (must have picked this up around the world), including the lactic shakedown favoured by Mr Breeze. Unfortunately, this season was another season of no promotion because of a heavy injury list. Final position was 5th, so no embarrassment, but by no means what we were able to achieve. Also during the season Salhouse started to produce young players from its highly invested youth team seeing Dale Weavers and Stuey Howes donning the Zebra stripes of the Salhousians.

2006/2007 2B Season

The start of this season was met with great enthusiasm. We had a full strength team with no injuries, this was our season. Well it turned out to be Wymondhams season, but that’s not the point. New players for the season included "2nd choice" Goalkeeper Neil Thomson, as a result of our former keeper Jamie emigrating to Amsterdam to sample all it has to offer, and "first choice" keeper Louis Sexton who both managed to keep clean sheets (very rare for Salhouse). The season started bad with two big defeats, but we soon got our play together and managed to put a 15 game unbeaten streak together. This put us at the top of the league for most of the season, and actually finished top once we had played all our games. We just had wait for Wymondham to finish their games. However they won all their remaining games, winning the league, leaving us as runners up. The season saw a Robert Castle moved to centre back and Neil Harris moving in the centre of Midfield with Mantelli creating a new winger position for Kev Breeze.Top goal scorer went to Oliver Harper, Players Player went to “can't complete a half of football” Neil Harris and Managers Player was awarded to Robert Castle. Mantelli managed to grab a bag full of goals, 14 in total (just thought that should be mentioned) from Midfield of all places.

2007/2008 1B Season

To follow at the end of the season, as you can see though they are flying………….

MM