to take their first step

Bushbury started life last September in preparation for the subsequent campaign and first-team manager Scott Queeney has outlined big plans for his Sunday league side.

The club will initially join the Beacon League, but Queeney has dreams of putting his team on the map and stepping on to the non-league ladder.

“It’s about giving Bushbury and the area, a football team,” he said. “We want to give people a team that they can get behind and follow. We don’t want to just settle for a Sunday league team, we want to become an established non-league side.

“We have a five-year project. Our goal is to get to non-league. We aim to get a squad together, strong enough to make that transition.”

This project signals Queeney’s first venture into 11-a-side management and prior to setting up the team, he scoured the region’s non-league circuit for a taste of grassroots football.

“What started the journey, my youngest lad wanted to do some ground-hopping,” he said. “So we went to watch some local teams. We travelled to watch non-league sides. We spoke to the managers and the people who run the clubs. We spoke to people from Dudley Town, Sporting Khalsa and Bilston Town.

“They were all encouraging and willing to help. The response has been great. Everyone wants to help us grow and are more than happy to give advice.”

As for the squad, training only began at the turn of the year but even in that short period, Queeney has already grouped together an exciting pool of players.

“We’ve been lucky,” he said. “We only first kicked a ball in January, but we’ve had over 50 players join us already.

“The core is made up of those who I have coached in the past. But players are welcome to join as long as they have the right attitude. We have people from all different backgrounds. There is a big range of players, we have five from Zimbabwe, lads from Sudan and Somalia.

“Nobody is treated differently. There are no egos, the team have bonded really well.

“After a couple of times advertising, we had players coming to us saying, I have heard good things about your club, I’d love to be a part of it.”

As with teams across the country, the coronavirus pandemic has halted Bushbury’s progress, but Queeney sees it as only a minor disruption on the way to assembling a strong team.

“Before everything was put on hold we had only played twice. But we had friendlies lined up all over the country, even one with a team in London, and we trained three times a week,” he said. “The lads are still talking, you can tell they’re missing football, but everyone understands that coronavirus is the bigger picture.

“We will be ready as soon as we get the all clear to play again. We will come back and continue from where we left off.”

Queeney is full of enthusiasm and determined to make a success of Bushbury Hill but he is also realistic about the size of the task he faces over the coming months.

“We are a club with a lot of ambition, but we are only just starting out,” he said. “It will take a lot of time and we will need local support.

“It’s about developing the club for the long term. How we can put our name out there, gather money consistently and not fall into financial issues.

“It’s a self-funded project, but that’s what Sunday league football is about.”