Jim White on how Sylvester Stallone's boxing fairytale has inspired Farnborough Town to give it their best shot against Arsenal at Highbury today.
Graham Westley has managed Farnborough Town since August 1999. He has won the Ryman League Cup and gained promotion to the Conference. Arsene Wenger has managed Arsenal since September 1996, winning the FA Cup and Premiership double twice and finishing runner-up once in UEFA Cup, once in the FA Cup and three times in the Premiership .
The crest Farnborough Town's players wear on their shirts today, when they take on Arsenal at Highbury in the FA Cup fourth round, is revealing: "A club with the right attitude." Like most things to do with this aggressively progressive club, it was the idea of Westley, chairman, manager, squad member and all-round Mr Farnborough.
Westley has a masters degree in business and clearly knows his way around a manual of motivational epithets. "Look in the dictionary and you'll see hard work comes before success," is one of his favourite axioms. He says it almost as frequently as he alludes to Sylvester Stallone's finest cinematic moment. "Taking on Arsenal, it's like Rocky Balboa when he beat Apollo Creed," he says. "You have one chance and it can happen. We watched him do it together last week, to remind ourselves what can happen."
Except of course it didn't happen: Rocky is a movie.
"I prefer," says Westley when this is pointed out to him, "to regard it as a seminar in the art of the possible." Westley took over Farnborough in 1999 when they were effectively bankrupt. Now 33, he was an England youth international before injury took its toll. After slipping out of the non-league game, he wanted to put his management theories into practice and this club looked an ideal vehicle.
An expensive one, mind. On average crowds at Cherrywood Road last season of 652, and with eight full-timers on his books plus a conditioning coach and dietician, he has been obliged to underwrite the club with capital from the family business. But his energetic approach has paid off. In his first season, he steered the club from the Ryman League to the Conference, the first step towards his plan to be in charge of a Premiership outfit by 2010.
Today's game is by far the biggest challenge he has faced and, with characteristic bravura, he has not approached it with half measures. "We realise we are going to be playing at altitude and we have to prepare bodies and minds for that," he says. "What we are doing here is going through an acclimatisation process."
Westley's build-up has been pure Premiership. Those players who are not full time have been obliged to take a fortnight off work. His plans involved trips to Chelsea for a physical, to Newcastle for a meeting with Bobby Robson, then off to La Manga for six days' training in the Spanish sun. On the day we meet, Westley and his squad are ensconced in a health farm in the Hampshire countryside, drinking organic lemonade, eating stir-fry vegetables and chatting to fellow guest Paul McGrath, over the yogurt bar.
'IF you like, this is almost like Challenge Anneka: in the 18 days from the draw you will be playing the double winners. Go and do it," says Westley. "I've developed a whole range of exercises, mental and physical, to bring the boys much closer to the best team in the country." Stretch classes, yoga and dodging middle-aged women in the spa bath are all part of the Farnborough players' day's work.
"We've taken the opportunity of drawing Arsenal to say to the boys: 'if you want to get there, here's the route map', benchmark yourself against the best. So we are behaving as they would for a game. The level of preparation Premiership players take for granted is phenomenal. Wenger has 17 specialist coaches. I'm hoping the lads will like what they see this fortnight, and say: 'Yes, I'd like to be doing this all the time'. Then they will take that attitude into the Conference, which remains our priority."
It was, says Westley, his keenness to use the Arsenal tie as a learning experience that encouraged him to switch the game to Highbury from the cosy confines of Cherrywood Road (a ground he is actively seeking to leave). "People talk about a greedy, money-orientated decision but that's the biggest load of nonsense," he says. "What we're doing is investing in ourselves. We're saying: 'let's play at the best to give us a taste of what it takes to be the best'." A brave decision, given that it removes at a stroke his team's only chance of pulling off the shock of the century.
"I wouldn't say that," he says. "Remember, Rocky Balboa was a southpaw; Apollo Creed struggled with that. Doesn't matter where we play this tie, we've got to find football's equivalent of being a southpaw." Which sounds less the art of the possible than of the incredible. "Oh, we're determined to have a go at doing something incredible," says Westley. "You don't have the chance to do something incredible every day of the week, do you?"
Guardian Service
