Today in our 22 Days in May series, KSN’s chief football writer Mike Green has been talking to one of Deal Town’s unsung heroes in the Vase win over Chippenham Town – we’ve been talking to Phil Turner…

“Twenty years! Doesn’t seem possible,” Phil admitted to us, “it’s gone so quickly! I was only talking to Marc Seager recently and we agreed that we could still remember it as though it was yesterday!”

“Looking back there were a few sides, who to be honest, we wanted to avoid in the competition, and we did. We got a bit lucky with the draw, the confidence was with us every round and we felt that we could win every game that we played in – the more it went on, the more the confidence was up and we thought that we could beat anyone.”

“You’ve got to give great credit to the Chairman (Roy Smith) who pulled out all the stops to get us to all the places where we were playing. We didn’t have to think about anything but the game, so you have to give him a lot of credit.”

We asked Phil what playing for boss Tommy Sampson was like – he said, “Where do you start really? His record and reputation throughout the Kent League speak for itself and when I was playing was at Greenwich Borough and Beckenham Town, Tommy’s teams always seemed to be the nearest to professional as a lot of the players would get.”

“He did things properly and you knew where you stood with him which was an advantage. I was playing with Jamie Kempster at Greenwich Borough – he signed for Tom and had been there a couple of weeks and he phoned me and told me that Tommy was thinking about getting me and he told me about the club and it worked out well.”

“We were all working full-time jobs up to the Final, but if Tommy called an extra training session, there would be no issues, and everyone would be there – we’d all be together going in the same direction. But the lead up to the Final almost felt normal.”

“There was not one bad person in the dressing room or one bad person in the Club – it sums it up! Every time I played leading up to the Final, I had confidence going onto the pitch that I was going to score a goal.”

“A couple of weeks before Wembley, I scored a hat-trick in a League Final and I hoped that I’d staked my claim for starting at Wembley. Then Tommy told me that I wasn’t starting, the first thing Steve Lovell did – who was playing – was to come up to me and put his arm round me and said, “don’t worry about it – you’ll get on and do yourself justice.” That shows how good it was, and ironically I replaced Steve as he played his last ever game!”

Deal lost Dave Monteith early in the Final due to injury, and we wondered how that went down on the bench.

He said, “We’re devasted for Monty first and foremost as what a player he was, but then as subs, you’re thinking “come on Tom, give me the shout, give me the shout!” but Tom and Colin Ford had to make the decision, so we had to get on with it and whoever went on did the job and you had to wait for your turn!”

“But my time came when Steve came off. It was just like any other game, any other Final – the build up was the most exciting game, you just hope that you do yourself justice when you go on. You haven’t got time to get excited and you just get on and do it.”

“To be fair to Chippenham, I thought they were the strongest side, but when you’ve got players like Roly Graham in your team who could finish from anywhere, that’s what it is really!”

“And to be honest, I was happy but gutted at the same time because you just want it to keep going on and on because you’re never going to get to Wembley twice!”

Roly was of course the hero with the winning goal, but Phil recalls if Steve Marshall hadn’t over hit his cross, we could have had a different hero.

“From what I can remember,” Phil recalled, “I made a run to the front post and I think he overegged the cross and luckily enough, it fell to Roly and the rest is history!”

“It all went so quickly and to hear the roar of the crowd and I just saw Roly running away celebrating. It was an absolutely brilliant feeling – walking up the steps I’ll always remember Denise Richmond was there and Jamie and I, who knew her from our Greenwich days, giving her a big hug – everyone was so pleased, it was just a great memory.”

“Everyone, I’m sure, would have liked another couple of seasons at a higher level to see what we could have done – I think with Tommy at the top he would have organised us and I think that we would have gone on and done well, but it wasn’t to be”

Next time we speak to the man who came off the Wembley bench to so gloriously equalise for the Gills in the Play Off Final as we turn our spotlight on Steve Butler.