Long Read: Write at the End
After Adam Randell scored Argyle's winner against Stoke City on Saturday, marking his 100th Argyle appearance, Argyle Media's Rob McNichol discusses how drama at the Theatre of Greens tops anything Tinseltown can come up with...
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The expression ‘you couldn’t write it’ really annoys me.
It is almost exclusively used in situations in which someone tasked with curating a fictionalised account of proceedings would come up with exactly what ends up occurring.
I dare say that were Hollywood scriptwriters put in charge of England v Greece in 2001, for example, a last-minute David Beckham goal, at Old Trafford, to send the Three Lions to a World Cup, would have been the plot from treatment through to final draft. You could even do the Simeone kick v Argentina as a prequel for the origin story.
Not only could you write it, I would argue that writing anything other than that would be less than sufficient.
I am being harsh. Clearly, I know what people mean. ‘If you wrote it, people wouldn’t believe you’ is probably a more accurate summation. There are times where you watch a Hollywood blockbuster with a set of convenient circumstances, and despite the best nuanced performances from the likes of Hanks and Ryan leading the line, you just think ‘yeah, like that would happen’.
Bringing it painstakingly back to football, many of us grew up in a world in which stories akin to the one which unfolded at Home Park on Saturday would be more familiar in the pages of a comic than on the silver screen.
Many is a time that the great Roy Race, that stalwart of the Melchester Rovers strike force for an unbelievable (literally unbelievable) four decades, popped up to score a winner in dramatic circumstances, often when his team had been 3-0 down at half-time or, slightly more dramatically, after he had been kidnapped in the preceding week before a cup final, or something.
The comic strip involving Race and his crayon-drawn pals ended several years before Adam Fletcher Randell was born, but the phrase of ‘Roy-of-the-Rovers stuff’ still permeates our game, I find. Racey, who had a left foot nicknamed ‘the Rocket’ in Melchestian lore, would have been proud of Our Adam’s left-pegged steer into the corner of the net against Stoke City.
“Cunds’ shot got blocked, it came straight to me and I managed to scuff it into the far post,” said Randell, in a needlessly self-deprecating way, after the game.
‘Scuff’, my foot. Or, indeed, his. It looked for all the world as though Randell was the calmest man in PL2 as he watched the ball fall to him and, first time, struck low and firmly into the bottom corner.
Calmness no more. Roaring, he charged towards the corner of Home Park, and 15,000 people roared back. There was a time that Randell would have been amongst that faithful.
Let’s reset, here, for perhaps an assumption that everyone knows the story is a little less than completest of me.
When people use the term ‘home-grown’…we are talking here about a 23-year-old who was born in our city, went to school at Plymstock, played for Hooe Rovers and came through a development centre at Stoke Damerel. And, damn it all, a game against Stoke brings him one of his finest moments.
Adam grew up as an Argyle fan, came through the Academy and became a professional. The game against Stoke marked his 100th for the club he has had an association with for almost his entire life.
Before Saturday, Randell had scored seven goals for the club, all away from home. Most had come in draws or defeats; the sole exception – not a bad exception, to be fair – came when Randell scored the equalising goal in Argyle’s 3-1 win at Port Vale, the final game of last season, which clinched the Greens’ League One title win.
So, then, Hollywood: a home-grown hero, on his 100th game, on as a substitute, in a game poised at 1-1, in the 97th minute, in front of the Babcock Devonport End – and you can’t write that? How could you write anything else?
“I've dreamt of like a moment like that,” said Adam, after the game. “Growing up, I wanted to score in that end, at any time.
“Somehow, I managed to make it carry on this long without one. Drag it out to my hundredth and it happened to be on the exact day. I'm over the moon.
“I made sure that they didn't have time to get back into the game! I had a shot before and messed that one up, but I was in the space, it came to me, and I knew I was going to hit it first time.
“Coming into the game, I knew that, if I came on, it was going to be my 100th. I was very proud of that already. When I got the nod to say I was coming on, that was a big boost for me thinking: ‘yeah, I've reached a milestone.’
“It’s another thing ticked off that you want to do. Hopefully I'll get another couple of hundred along the way.
“I wanted to come in and affect the game just like I do every game. I just managed to be in the right place at the right time. I guess I definitely affected it.”
Adam Randell, once again Prince of the Understatement. (I would make him King but, you know, he would instantly downgrade himself.)
The quotes above are from a post-match interview done with Randell by the excellent Charlie Price on Argyle TV, after the Stoke game. In said interview, Charlie referred to Randell making his 100th Argyle appearance on the day that Michael Cooper, another Academy graduate, made his 150th.
“Two local lads,” said Charlie, “through the Academy since you were yay high, making that amount of appearances. It’s a special moment.”
Well said, and especially apropos. I recall seeing Randell play for Argyle in the FA Youth Cup, aged probably about 16, and he was several notches short of being ‘yay high’. Undoubtedly talented, calm on the ball, but one could not help but question whether or not his stature, or lack thereof, would hold him back.
If I may namecheck another talented member of the Argyle media team, my colleague Ellie Burton recently made a tremendous half-hour long documentary for Argyle TV called ‘Randell: One of our Own’, in which Adam, his parents and various coaches and team-mates take us through his career so far. It’s a must-watch; a superb piece.
A big part of the chat are Aaron Cusack and Ian Stonebridge, who coached Adam through his development. They touch on him being small as a youth, but it is highly encouraging to hear them speak of all of the qualities the young Rands possessed that far outweighed any knocks on his diminutiveness.
We have seen Adam Randell grow before our eyes, literally and figuratively, often the two going in tandem. He made a debut as an Academy player in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy, signed a professional deal and was part of the first-team squad in 2019/20, playing three more trophy games, and coming on a substitute four times in the league.
The following season, he went to Torquay United on loan, which I am convinced was the making of him. I happened to be working for BBC Radio Devon at the time, and Plainmoor was a frequent posting for me. Adam played 45 times for Torquay as they came close to promotion from the Vanarama National League, and I watched him go from raw teenager to crucial first-team player.
He shone for the Gulls, toughening up physically, and playing in a variety of roles, mostly in midfield, but the odd stint at right-back, which funnily enough was the position he was ostensibly playing in at the time of his Stoke winner.
Adam was loved at Torquay; winning the Young Player of the Year award in his time there being testament to that. To get appreciated by a club’s fans – especially as a loan player – you have to demonstrate many qualities, not least hard work and commitment. Every time I commentated on a Torquay game involving Adam, I saw him improve.
I have improved, too. For that entire season, and a little beyond, I called him Ran-dell, with the emphasis on the latter syllable. I blame someone else for giving me a bit of a bum steer, but I may as well use this forum to apologise to Adam.
Ian Stonebridge was the one who put me right on that, showing even more influence on Adam’s career. What I love now is that I am already seeing Adam’s influence on others, if indirectly.
This Thursday, Argyle’s current crop of Under-18s will take to the field in the FA Youth Cup, against Crystal Palace. Several of those young players will be projecting forwards in their heads, imagining their own special moments at Home Park in years to come, maybe getting to 100, 150 games or more for the Greens.
Those enthusiastic, hopeful teenagers will have that little extra belief that it is possible because of people like Adam Randell and Michael Cooper, who have paved a way for others to follow. It can be done.
You can’t write it. But you can dream of it.
