“I didn’t realise actually that there were seven, I knew there were a few but I didn’t know there were seven of us.”
These are the words of the seventh member of that most strange of cohorts. Lee Camp saw an awful lot during his 589 career appearances, he was part of Sunderland Til I Die, but even Charlie Methven couldn’t have cooked up a situation in which a team had seven goalkeepers in one season.
But that is exactly what happened to Swindon during the historic shambles that was the 2020/21 campaign. Alongside the furious tirades of John Sheridan heard over iFollow, the seven goalkeepers probably sum up the madness the best.
Matej Kovar. Joe Fryer. Mark Travers. Jojo Wollacott. Archie Matthews. Connal Trueman. Lee Camp.
“The relationship between goalkeepers and defenders is important because you have to have that understanding,” said Tom Broadbent. “I suppose in the modern day you have the sweeper ‘keepers and things like that, so you have to know if the ‘keeper is going to go for that or not. There has to be that trust and that works both ways.
“[How quickly that comes] depends on how good the goalkeeper is, it can be built up quite quickly if you have a really good goalkeeper between the sticks, but normally it takes a bit longer.”
Following winning the League Two title the previous season with Swansea City loanee Steven Benda in goal, Town entered the campaign having gone up a level and searching for a replacement after Benda was given the chance to play at his parent club.
Town began the season with Manchester United loanee Kovar as the first-choice and Fryer as the backup. Multiple costly errors would plague Kovar’s time with Swindon, but both Broadbent and Wright said what he has gone on to do since leaving Swindon has not come as a major surprise.
“Goalkeeping is more of a specialised coaching thing,” said former first-team coach Tommy Wright. “When I was there Steve [Mildenhall] was really good and most of the players have gone on to play at a higher level, but you are never going to get everything right.
“Young players on their first loan in whatever position can be 50-50 and you are not sure. But he was very good with his feet, he was athletic, and he was tall, so we kind of thought he would be ideal.”
Broadbent said he had been very impressed with the now Bayer Leverkusen goalkeeper: “He didn’t have the best start, but I could see from training that he was always going to go on and have a great career.
“When you have a young ‘keeper that comes in and keeps making mistakes, the lads might be like ‘He’s having a difficult time here, maybe we need to bring him out and let him recover. We need to win games and get the confidence back up.’ But then also you would like for them to keep playing, have some good games, and get their confidence back that way, knowing that the good player will come out in the end.”
But the theory never really played out with the young Czech goalkeeper as Town struggled greatly at the back. They had to wait 12 games for their first clean sheet and sloppy goals seemed to be playing on the youngster’s mind.
“He had a difficult start and with the way we wanted to play out from the back with him making a few mistakes and that obviously played on his confidence,” said Broadbent. Wright felt that Kovar’s lack of experience meant that the mistakes were impacting him more than they might have done to a more experienced goalkeeper.
Kovar maintained his spot until Wellens departed for Salford City in November. He was replaced by Sheridan, who made the call to switch goalkeepers during his first game against Shrewsbury Town. However, this didn’t produce the desired upturn as Fryer let in six goals in two games before Sheridan went back to Kovar.
“Joe was a young guy coming up,” Wright said. "Steve quite liked him and he thought we had a chance of getting a good goalkeeper, but he wasn’t quite ready. So we had a problem of being in a higher league with two young goalkeepers. We wanted to show a bit of faith in Matej and say that everyone makes mistakes and he would come through it, but it didn’t really work out that way.
“John came in and he [Kovar] looked really low on confidence, as an outfield player you can get away with that, but as a goalkeeper, there is nobody to help you.”
Swindon made it to January and Kovar returned to United to be replaced by Mark Travers from Bournemouth. With a young but more experienced goalkeeper in place, in any normal season, this is where the trouble would have ended. But for Swindon, the goalkeeping merry-go-round had only just started to spin.
“Everybody I spoke to about Travers said that we should take him,” said Wright. “I spoke to Anthony White, who is an England goalkeeping coach, and he said he is going to be top-notch. He did ok, but you are playing behind a team that is conceding a lot of goals and not playing to the best of their abilities. It wasn’t just goalkeepers that were struggling with confidence at this point, it was everybody.”
“There was loads of stuff going on behind the scenes,” said Broadbent. “You could see it building throughout the season and things like that do come down into the playing squad and affect the team. You try not to because you just concentrate on what you can control, but when certain things are happening it is hard not to let it affect you.”
Travers seemed more confident than Kovar or Fryer, but still could not stop the avalanche of goals Town were conceding. Even in arguably the best performance of the season against Ipswich Town, two goals went in at the other end.
The on-loan Bournemouth goalkeeper lasted until February but as Sheridan was yelling at people to run at Portsmouth, Travers was about to do just that. An injury in training for Asmir Begovic saw him return to the Vitality Stadium never to return.
Suddenly a string of emergency loans were required as an already panicked defence experienced even more disruption. Between Wollacott, Trueman, and Matthews, Town had to muddle through the next seven games.
Wright said: “You can imagine what it was like for us and particularly Steve. It was a bad period of time because we were not doing well and it was not an attractive place to come, so the situation wasn’t helping us get people in.
“Wollacott came in and did well, but then he got a knee injury in the warm-up and he had to go back. Then you have another young kid [Matthews] go in. It was a tough time and there was enough going on without the goalkeepers.
“You do think ‘How bad is our luck’, but you can’t wallow in it. Fair play to Mildy, he was working really hard and he did get good goalies in, that is the thing. Just the situation around not just with the goalkeeper, but everything was tough.”
Eventually, a permanent solution was found as the experienced Camp came in, but even that was a painful process. He instantly contributed to clean sheets against Fleetwood Town and Bristol Rovers, giving a glimmer of hope for survival.
“I had had a phone call in the summer when Richie was manager and it was floated if I would like to be the ‘keeper, but nothing came of it,” said Camp. “Then around late February, I got another call about it, and between the first offer being made and the signing was about three weeks. Covid was making it difficult to get in places, the travelling, and restrictions of what you could and couldn’t do, but I still wanted to play.
“Swindon wasn’t the best financial offer or location, but I fancied working with John Sheridan and Steve Mildenhall. I moved to Old Town, but it was a bit of a boring existence as between going to the supermarket and getting a takeaway coffee, there wasn’t a lot to do.”
“It’s just the little things,” said Broadbent on the influence of Camp. “It is a bit more communication and he can see everything on the pitch so he is constantly talking to you. Obviously, you are aware of things going on around you, but even when you receive the ball off the goalkeeper, he can tell you where to pass it because he can see where someone is pressing you from.”
“I was very aware that we hadn’t necessarily turned the corner,” said Camp on that brief Renaissance after his arrival. “I am experienced enough and have been involved in enough relegation scraps to know you can soon be slapped back down to earth. We had two good away wins and I found playing away a lot easier as there was no real difference with no hostile atmosphere like there would be normally. I knew we had a chance, but the team was where it was for a reason.”
It wasn’t to last. Five straight defeats saw Swindon relegated in brutal circumstances after a 5-0 drubbing at Milton Keynes Dons. Stadium MK is cavernous at the best of times, but in the silence of a Covid crowd, Town’s time in League One had lasted just one season.
Camp said: “Being relegated is horrific anyway. We were fully aware of what relegation would mean for the football club. Maybe not having fans worked against us, maybe the younger players didn’t have that sense of urgency, I am not accusing anyone of anything, but you never know how that affects someone’s psyche. It was the weirdest experience of playing football that I have ever had. It just wasn’t normal.
“We did actually have a few conversations about me staying on, but the situation at the club dictated what they could and couldn’t do, so it ended pretty abruptly. We had a conversation, me and Mildy, about three weeks before the end of the season and I thought I could make it work. No one seemed to know what was happening and then it blew up after the end of the season and I found out when I was on the released list. It was disappointing to think about what could have been, but the football club had bigger things to worry about.”
Mind you, at least he had some conversations. “There wasn’t really anyone to have the discussions with,” said Broadbent. “I think we lost against AFC Wimbledon and it was quite a big defeat. Sheridan came in afterwards and said ‘That is me, lads, I am leaving.’ So then no one was there to offer you a new deal.
"In the end, Mildy was the only one left and messaged me to say ‘I don’t know what’s going on mate, no one is here to renew your deal, so you are a free agent.’ I had been at the club for two-and-a-half years and wanted to stay, but that is how it goes.
“Before that, it was things like playing Wigan, which is far and normally you would go up the day before and stay in a hotel, but we didn’t have any of that. The majority of the time it was alright, but the Wigan one stood out because Brett Pitman and I decided to get a hotel ourselves and go up the day before.
"This was a professional football team and things weren’t being done right. So you could see all of that coming. It is frustrating because you want to do well for the team and make sure everything is being done properly.”
And that was it. Seven different goalkeepers combined to concede 89 goals, the second-most Town have let in since the 1950s. With practically all of the squad having been let go, Swindon only just had more contracted players over the summer than they had used goalkeepers that season.
A season that for everyone else had been mad enough with no fans and constant testing had seven more spanners thrown into the works as the walls caved in around the club.
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