Do you like to be entertained? If the answer is ‘yes’ then get yourself down to Kayte Lane, home of Bishop’s Cleeve Football Club, where last season there was plenty of entertainment on offer.

The men’s flagship team, who play in Division One South of the Southern League, were banging in goals for fun for much of the campaign, so much so that only the top three sides in the 20-strong division scored more than their 66 goals.

Cleeve’s 38 league matches actually produced 140 goals, the most in division, making them the division’s great entertainers.

And while they were winning fans with their enterprising play, they were winning games as well because their ninth-placed finish was the best in their 118-year history.

That was some performance after they won the Hellenic League Premier Division title the previous season and the good news for their supporters is that manager Paul Collicutt, back at the club he managed for 12 years from 1999, wants more.

“There’s room for improvement,” he said. “I always want to play entertaining football. The one thing you can’t knock us for is the number of goals we scored last season, we weren’t boring!”

That is very true but Collicutt – known to everyone as Colly – is also in the business of winning, and to win more games he knows his team have to concede fewer goals this time around.

“We were unlucky with injuries but we underachieved defensively,” he admitted. “I wanted to play three at the back with Linden Dovey, Leroy Odiero and Shayne Anson but they ended up playing just four games together all season. We won three of those and drew the other.

“We’ve got a top goalkeeper in Lewis Clayton who we signed from Evesham. He's a top bloke, he’s an ex-Cleeve Colts player and he does a bit of coaching with the younger keeper.

“Unfortunately we couldn’t keep a settled side in front of him last season. We played three at the back and at other times we played four at the back, we had players coming in just for the odd game, it wasn’t ideal.”

And while that made things tough, 64-year-old Colly saw enough in 2022/23 to give him plenty of encouragement ahead of the new campaign.

The experienced Dovey and Odiero are signed on for another season and a number of new players have joined the club, and Colly added: “We struggled for numbers in the last three or four weeks but we still got some good results.

“We went to Bideford and won 2-1 with two or three of our youth team players in the side, and we went to Melksham Town, played 5-4-1 for the first time and won 1-0.

“That speaks volumes for the lads who came in, we are a fairly close-knit squad. I want players to come in and enjoy it, that’s how you get the best out of them.”

One such player is experienced striker Ross Langworthy, who joined the club in the early part of the season from Fairford Town and went on to score 20 goals.

Colly is looking forward to seeing him link up him with new strikers Ethan Dunbar and Jay Malshanskyj, signed from Slimbridge and Melksham respectively, this season and he said of Langworthy: “The way he went about his work he was a breath of fresh air, he worked his socks off.”

Colly will be working his socks off, too, for a club that have always been very close to his heart.

He has lived in Bishop’s Cleeve since the age of nine, went to school in the village and has played a huge part in the football club’s success over the past two decades and more.

In his previous time as manager he won promotion to the Hellenic League Premier Division and then to the Southern League for the first time in their history, and also took the club into the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup.

And in those early years the club had no home to call their own for much of the time, using Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucester City, Forest Green and Evesham to stage their home matches.

“We were nomads,” recalled Colly. “We were a laughing stock but we got through it, we’ve come a long way.”

They certainly have and Colly, who returned to the club at the start of the 2020/21 season after managing Evesham United and then spending a year as director of football at Stratford Town, is looking forward to this season as much as he has ever done.

“When it’s in your blood it’s hard to move away from it,” he said. “I still get a big kick out of it. I just enjoy football, end of story.”

Colly runs his own meat wholesale business in Leckhampton, Cheltenham, and he believes there are a lot of similarities between managing a football club and managing a business.

“In work, you’re only as good as the last week,” he said. “It’s the same in football, if you win a game you can’t just expect to turn up to the next game and win again. You have to work hard to achieve anything.”

Colly has certainly achieved plenty over the years and when it comes to football he has been achieving for well over half a century because back in the day he was a very decent player, someone who was good enough to be a full-time professional at Swindon Town for three years.

“I lived the dream,” he said. “I’d had trials with QPR, Southampton and Luton, and QPR and Southampton offered me apprenticeship forms. I chose Swindon because I thought I had more chance of breaking into the first team but it didn’t happen.

“If I have one regret, it was that I didn’t work before I went to Swindon. Getting up at 2.30 in the morning and grafting for a living, if I’d done that then it might have turned out differently because I didn’t realise how lucky I was.

“I still treated football like it was a hobby. I can always remember a wet training session one Friday morning, we always played five-a-side on a Friday, and this lad absolutely battered me, he absolutely took me out.

“I said to the assistant manager Frank Burrows, ’Why did he do that?’ and he said, ’What position does he play, he plays in the same position as you, you’re threatening his livelihood’.

“I was a bit naive because I’d been getting a couple of good reviews in the reserves, but I still played at Highbury, Ashton Gate, Portman Road, Tottenham, Stamford Bridge, Carrow Road and Fulham, I was very fortunate to do that.”

He particularly remembers playing against Kevin Beattie at Ipswich. Beattie, who played for England, was on the comeback trail after injury and Colly said: “He oozed class.”

Colly also played for Forest Green, Gloucester City and Cheltenham Town, and was captain of Cheltenham when they won promotion to the Conference – the top tier in non-League football – back in the mid-1980s.

The former Bristol City youth, Cheltenham Town youth and Cleeve Colts player had already captained Trowbridge Town to promotion to the same level at the start of the 80s and those two successes are a source of great pride for him.

Colly enjoyed his time at Trowbridge, although it was while he was there that he was sent off for the only time in his career.

“It was at Corby Town,” he recalled. “I got booked for a foul in the first half on Trevor Morley who went on to play for West Ham and Manchester City.

“I caught him again in the second half and off I went. I apologised to the lads after the game and the manager Alan Birchenall came up to me and said, ’You daft so-and-so, West Ham were watching you today’.”

Colly wasn’t aware of that at the time and while he would obviously have jumped at the chance to move on had it come about, he did at least get the opportunity to play alongside someone who made his name at the very highest level of the game.

“George Armstrong was at Trowbridge when I was there, he played left-back,” remembered Colly. “He won just about everything with Arsenal but you’d never know it, he was the perfect gentleman.”

Colly is very easy to interview and he enjoys telling a good story. 

He made his debut for Cheltenham as a 16-year-old and he can still remember it to this day.

“I came off the bench against Witney on Boxing Day,” he said. “Dennis Allen was the boss. As a kid I was a midfielder, I was 6ft, 6ft 1in and I had a bit of a shot on me. I had a reputation as someone who could score a goal from 25-30 yards, I was taking the free-kicks for Cheltenham as a 16-year-old.

“Then when I went to Swindon we played Plymouth in the FA Youth Cup. Our centre-half got injured in the warm-up and the manager asked me if I’d play there. I played well and was always a centre-half after that.

“I was a big lad and although I wasn’t the quickest I could read a game. And I liked a tackle, these days you’re not allowed to tackle!”

So did he prefer being a player or does he prefer being a manager?

“A thousand times a player,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “Being a manager is a very, very poor second to playing.”

He’ll still be kicking every ball on the touchline this season, of course, as he looks to push Bishop’s Cleeve on to even greater heights.

“Budget-wise we are one of the weaker clubs in the league,” he said. “Just like Cheltenham we are punching above our weight.

“We do need more people to come in and help with the running of the club and we do need more people coming to support us at games. I’d love more people to come through the turnstiles”

Any fans going to Kayte Lane for the first time are sure to be impressed by the club’s 3G artificial pitch, a pitch that was installed towards the back-end of the 2021/22 season.

Cleeve scored 18 goals in their first two games on the new pitch as they clinched the Hellenic League title and Colly, who played all his football on grass, admitted: “I’m gradually coming round to it.

“It allows us to play an enterprising brand of football but as with any sport you’ve got to win. I was really chuffed with the number of goals we scored last season but as a centre-half I like clean sheets.

“Last season we picked up quite a few injuries. In football you need a bit of luck but if we can keep the squad fit I think we can have another good season.”

And if they do Colly will be more delighted than anyone because it means so much to him.

“I played in the first ever Cleeve Colts team,” he said with obvious pride. “It was for the under-12s more than 50 years ago. We were a good side, we won leagues, cups, did the double.

“I played with the likes of Clive Rawlings, Tim Bayliffe, Bob Styman, Andrew Dudfield, Mark Hill, Steve New, Greg Blake.

“Cleeve Colts was massive for us when we were younger and that’s why Bishop’s Cleeve matters to us so much now.”

So how long does Colly intend continuing as manager?

“You have to retain the respect of the players,” he said. “I try to treat players the way I wanted to be treated when I was a player.

“I’ll keep going for as long as I enjoy it.”

And if the goals column is as healthy this time around as it was last season, he’s certainly going to enjoy the 2023/24 campaign.