The second in a series of interviews with our local football managers about their highs, lows and hopes for their club.

Helston Athletic manager Steve Massey is next in the hot seat.

Favourite game?

I think the Boxing Day game last season against Falmouth when we won that [1-0], I think Scott Beattie scored, that was a good one. I think the Bodmin away game [5-1 win in 2019] when I had Lewis Tonkin and Al Williams at right-back and left-back, [they had] never played there before, and Kai Cornish was exceptional out on the right wing.

I had a team full of basically the under-18 side and it just said to me about the potential of the boys if it all goes right.

That Falmouth one [3-0 win in January to set league wins record] was very special just purely because of the guys and the team I had.

I was really wary, thinking, ‘oh God this is going to haunt me again. We’ve got the chance of beating this record and going 18 games on the trot and we’ve got Falmouth’.

I think the evening game against Penzance [won 11-0] when Alfie Flack got a hat-trick and Kai Cornish got a hat-trick. That was another one when I thought, ‘Cor, this team is really going places’.

Biggest achievement so far?

I know it’s going to rankle with some people but the actual 20/20 stuff that we talked about, and the vision that Stuart [Massey, brother] and I mentioned when we first came to the football club three seasons ago to say by the season in 2020 we’ll have a team [that is capable of winning the league].

Nobody, whatever you think about my players, whatever you think personally about me, nobody can take that away from us. From what I said three seasons ago and what we aimed for as a football club, and the coaches and the management and the players that I’ve got around me, [nobody can say] that we’ve not actually gone and delivered.

You can’t take that away from us that we have a team and squad that is capable of winning this league.

Hopes for the future?

I would like to have achieved a club that is predominantly based on bringing the youngsters through into a first team who then go on to represent the county.

I think I would like to have brought a standard of football that would never have been seen in Helston’s history before. That’s a big driving force, to actually go and play in the highest standard of football that the club has been in.

What makes the club special to you?

The people in it, without a doubt. Helston football club is a name, it’s been there 125 years, but it’s the people that make it.

When I first came down I’d spoken to a number of clubs before I’d decided to take the Helston job, and it was just the people that attracted me to Helston, with the chairman [Paul Hendy], the groundsman John is so passionate about the game and about his pitch.

The management in the teams, the second team, the third team were really passionate about the club, and I thought we could get something really special here.

It’s a unique club that is not hiding from its ambitions, the people involved in it through to the chairman and the committee are ambitious but realistic. Maybe step five is as high as we can go at the moment, certainly for the foreseeable future, but I think we are in a great position.