The good times are back for Cashes Green Football Club.

The club’s two Stroud League teams are flying high in their respective divisions and there is plenty of optimism as they look ahead to the future.

Their flagship team are going great guns in Division Five – they are chasing their third successive promotion – while their reserves are doing just as well in Division Seven.

There’s clearly a feelgood factor around the club, one that is helping to propel the club onwards and upwards, and yet it wasn’t so long ago that the future looked very bleak for one of the more established names in the Stroud League.

In fact, so tough did it get that they were forced to withdraw their only team from the league midway through the season a handful of years ago.

“Yes, that was tough,” admitted current first-team manager Andy Bunn, who has done so much to help turn the club around in recent times.

The 48-year-old has a long association with the club which goes back all the way to the late 1980s when he started playing for them as a 16-year-old.
He’s now in his second spell as manager – he stopped playing when he was 38 – and clearly seems to know what it takes to be the main man.

In his first spell as boss he won promotion to Division One and then guided the club to runners-up in the topflight, and since returning to the club they’ve won promotion from Division Seven before winning the Division Six title last time out. They also won the division’s League Cup last season.

When the club were re-admitted into the league, they had to start in the basement division but that already seems a long time ago with Bunn saying: “It’s all very healthy. The first team are doing well, and Dave Frost is doing a great job with the reserves. He’s brought in a lot of new players, it’s a complete new team.”

And there’s certainly plenty of ambition at the club.

“We want to get back up to Division One, that’s the aim,” said Bunn, who would love to make the dream a reality. “Cashes Green is a big part of my life. I get a real buzz out of seeing the club doing well.

“As a player I’ve got a lot of good memories, I want to give something back, I want to see the good times return.”

And they do seem to be returning.

“We’ve got some good players,” continued Bunn. “Jack Dangerfield is the captain, he plays at the back, he’s worked his way back from midfield.

“Tyler Gingell and Max Gomer are our main goalscoring threat. Max’s dad John is my assistant. Kris Wylie also gets goals. He’s our penalty taker, he places them, I’ve never seen him miss one.”

Bunn was an out-and-out defender in his playing days. Ask him if he was more Gary Neville or Trent Alexander-Arnold and he laughs before saying: “Gary Neville”, adding, “if I played in midfield I was like Vinnie Jones!”

It’s different now he’s a manager though.

“I like my team to play good football, get the ball down,” he said. “At the start of the season we were scoring goals for fun. Now it’s a bit more difficult because teams sit back and try to hit us on the counter-attack.”
Bunn admits that he has been fortunate because there is a good team off the field which allows him to concentrate on the playing side.

“Liam Gilby is our secretary and treasurer, he has a thankless task,” said Bunn. “He takes the pressure off me. His wife, Della, is the chairman and Clive Eckersall is vice-chairman. Clive was joint manager with me when we won promotion to Division One a few seasons ago.”

As things stand now there is every chance that the club will be celebrating not one promotion, but two, in a couple of months’ times.