“Papa” highlights positives, challenges facing Swetes team

Coach of the Swetes Football Club, Steven “Papa” Joseph said that his biggest challenge since taking the reins of the team last year has been convincing his players that the top flight is not a simple walkover. Swetes went unbeaten in the First Division during the 2016/17 domestic season to earn promotion to the top flight for the first time in the club’s history.
But according to Joseph, although the enthusiasm is welcomed, he has to guard against overconfidence. “With all this positive confidence coming into the premier league, these boys were aiming for glory, just one-time glory, and I had to bring them back down to earth and let them understand that this is a completely different league. You don’t want to shatter their confidence, but at the same time you want to harness it, and I think that was the biggest problem that I had,” Joseph said.
Swetes are currently 7th in the 10-team standings with 9 points, 4 points adrift of 6th placed Grenades and levelled with Pigotts Bullets who also have 9 points. Joseph said he also faced challenges with getting the community to buy into his philosophy. “It’s a lovely community, the best job I’ve ever had coaching wise, but one of the things you have to do is that you have to take friend and company out of it, and that’s the first hurdle I had to deal with.
I had to move people away who were playing because of friend and company,” the coach said. “I basically changed the formation, tweaking it a little bit and that was it. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had because talent and touches, I can’t complain about the formation, roles and things like that, I just had to do a bit of work behind the scenes, but honestly, it’s quite an easy job,” he added.