Forest Green proved to be the biggest underachievers of the season as their challenge for promotion felt doomed from the first few weeks of the season. Dave Hockaday was kept on as a manager and given extensive budget in the summer despite the poor end of the previous campaign and he embarked on an ambitious transfer campaign. Andy Mangan, Anthony Barry and Danny Wright all looked excellent additions to an already talented squad and also, vitally, had experience of challenging and winning promotion at this level. The start could not have been better, an 8:0 demolition of Hyde, but it became clear soon that the balance in the team was not quite right and the defence was left exposed too often. A chaotic 5:2 defeat at Welling in September signalled the start of the end for Hockaday as his team completely collapsed in the weeks after that. They lost seven games out of eight before he was eventually let go in October after a last-gasp home loss to Macclesfield. Rovers were looking far off the play-off picture but there was still a lot of time in the season to compensate for the lost points and the hopes were that Adrian Pennock, who was appointed after a couple of other candidates rejected the job, would hit the ground running. A former Tony Pulis assistant manager, he focused on a more direct and straight-lined approach at the start. The results improved but not by a great deal and the team remained mostly an inconsistent one. They clearly had very good attacking players in Jamie Norwood, Marcus Kelly and Matty Taylor but were failing to make the most of their resources and looked stuck in mid-table at the turn of the year. But the owner approved another major singing in January in veteran striker, Lee Hughes, and that certainly lifted the level of the team in the following weeks. They suffered just one loss in nine games as the season approached its critical juncture and a particularly inspired comeback over Cambridge gave the team real impetus and belief that they can get into the top five. Yet, the team had another collective loss of nerve and form just when it mattered the most and three defeats in a row in early April definitely ended any hopes of an unlikely play-off slot. Thus, the season ended on a low note and with a lot of ‘what ifs’ but the hopes are for a stronger start and better balance next year. Pennock showed enough so far to suggest that he is up to the challenge of taking the team to the Football League and he will be surely given the necessary funds for that mission.
