James Tilley

Can anyone remind me the circumstances of James Tilley leaving Town?

He seems to have developed into a decent player at Wimbledon.  I seem to remember he wasn’t rated by the fans here but maybe it shows that you have to stick with young players until they develop properly.

I saw him as raw and light wright, but skilful enough at that time. Has he bulked up since?

Against Wimbledon looked a lot chunkier (and more tattooed) than during his last spell with us. A good few years older now, of course.

I can’t remember him but my son said he was nothing special

Think Holloway brought him up from Brighton, started well enough but was in & out of games like most wingers are. Then got clattered early-on one game and was taken off with a head injury. Didn’t look the same to me after that.

Hurst came in, started him in his first game back but took him off at halftime when 2-down at home to Cambridge. Left him out the squad for the next match and left by mutual consent a fortnight later. He had 6 months left on his contract at that point.

He’s only just now, 2 & half years later, delivering on that early promise after spells at Dorking & Crawley. Never know the circumstances behind his departure, how much he was on, what he had in his contract etc. Fair to say Hurst jettisoned plenty when he first came in, maybe Tilley was unlucky but he definitely wasn’t a Hurst-type player.

Maybe adds weight to the notion that young players need time to develop but the game is impatient and doesn’t generally afford that scope. Doing really well for Wimbledon now and looks like we let him go in error, but, in truth, we are just as susceptible to wanting results and outcomes swiftly and he was fairly unremarkable during his time with us, although, he never really had a long run of games.

Must have been very hard for a young lad to move hundreds of miles from home to join a completely dysfunctional club as the country plunged into lockdowns and a global pandemic. Suspect it wasn't the dream that was sold to him and Holloway hardly helped him by massively raising expectations with his usual hyperbolic bullshit.

When he signed for us he was a boy. A young boy living a long way from home.

Now he is a man and playing his best football for Wimbledon.

He was only average at Crawley so sometimes you have to play the long game with some young players.

I think it’s a bit hard to judge the lad on his time here, or our decision to let him go, given the prevailing circumstances.

He signed as 20-year old in January 2020, to much Ian Holloway fanfare (I assume he got a decent kickback), a time long before “Runaway” had run away, and anything the reprehensible Bristolian had to say held far more stock than it ought to have done. That set a level of expectation that probably didn’t help the kid, but my memory of his initial time at BP was that he did ‘alright’ without particularly pulling up any trees.

Then Covid hit, and we shouldn’t underestimate the significance of that to a young man in the fledgling years of his career, 250 miles from home. Under contract or not, I can only imagine that spring / summer was a tough and worrying time for young footballers.

Then when football eventually returned, the club had become a complete basket case, he’s playing in empty stadiums and for a chunk of his latter time was playing while the country was under strict lockdown conditions. He’s basically stuck, alone in a hotel room, with none of his friends or family around him, unable to legally travel home, with naff all to do to entertain himself. Those aren’t circumstances that are likely to get the best out of the kid, and ultimately the move to Crawley was an absolute no-brainer at the time.

Christ, when I was 20, I was happy spending my days smoking weed, eating KFC and playing GTA Vice City for the bulk of my waking hours. I doubt a major pandemic would have brought out the professional best in me.

He’s doing well at the minute so good luck to him. A forgettable part of GTFC history but by no means is that entirely attributable to him. Wrong place, wrong time.

Quoted from Rodley Mariner

Must have been very hard for a young lad to move hundreds of miles from home to join a completely dysfunctional club as the country plunged into lockdowns and a global pandemic. Suspect it wasn't the dream that was sold to him and Holloway hardly helped him by massively raising expectations with his usual hyperbolic bullshit.

Yup. Agree