Southport were able to successfully defend their status as a Conference Premier status yet again, doing just about enough to keep their heads above the water and able to stay up despite a small squad and struggles throughout. There was a change on the manager front at the start of the season as Martin Foyle took over from the popular John Coleman. The permanent signing of Richard Brodie was the biggest coup of the close season, with Luke Foster and Scott Kay looking like good additions too, but the loss of big players like Scott Brown and Aristote Nsiala was bound to hurt the Sandgrounders. The start of the season was mostly underwhelming and they managed to claim only one win in the first seven outings, late on against Altrincham. There was little in the performances to suggest that anything better than a relegation battle was on the cards for the team. They were able to record the odd good result, shocking Grimsby for a 1:0 win on the road in late September that ended a run of more than 12 months without an away victory, but the defeats were all too common for the most part and Foyle was let go by the first week of October, on the back of a responding 5:2 loss at the hands of Woking. Former manager and fan favourite, Gary Brabin, returned to take over as a manager and enjoyed a flying start. Southport went on undefeated for the next six games in the league and played some more expansive and exciting stuff. The form levelled out a bit in late autumn but the team was showing good spirit and fight in every game and there was bullish defiance around them whenever they took on the pitch. An excellent win over Dagenham & Redbridge in a FA Cup replay in November earned a shot at getting into the coveted third round of the competition and a narrow win over league rivals, Eastleigh, indeed earned a lucrative trip to Derby County at the start of 2015. In the league, a run of just one loss in five games during the festive schedule kept the team just above the drop zone and generally doing fine. Southport put in a brilliant effort against Derby and were seconds away from earning a replay, only for a penalty at the death to send them packing. Even if they came out with great credit from the game, the result did have something of a demoralising effect on the entire squad. To make matters worse, Brabin surprisingly left his position as a manager in mid-January in order to take up a role as a youth coach at Everton. That left the club in a precarious position and Brabin’s assistant, Paul Carden, took over for the rest of the season. Given that it was his first job as a first-team manager and he was thrown directly into a tight relegation battle, one had to fear for Southport’s prospects. They struggled badly in the first few weeks after the change, losing four games in a row, including a crucial one away at direct rivals Alfreton. They were eight games without a win going into March and just on the back of a 5:3 drubbing away at Forest Green. It was time for the Sandgrounders to pick up their form and they certainly did, winning four and drawing two of the next six games by turning some excellent defensive showings. Carden managed to find the right balance at the back and this excellent run at a key stage of the season proved enough to keep the team up. They had a nice cushion for the final month of the season and four losses in a row, as injuries took hold of a small squad, did not prove as fatal as they could have been. Thus, Southport were able to stay up after doing just enough and one would expect the modest Merseyside club to keep on fighting against the odds next season too.
