and they are still a division below them. Their great hope: that the storm has finally blown out, that failure has had its time, that fate has stopped punching them repeatedly in the jaw. And that the unfamiliarity of winning matches might reignite something that looked lost.South, having suffered four relegations since.
The great shame is that the high watermark of Yeovil’s history was a mere flicker, a blink of time that comes without prior knowledge and so is inevitably, subconsciously, taken a little for granted. Yeovil scaled their unlikely mountain, had little time to enjoy the view and subsequently tumbled back down the path to the bottom, deeply bruised by the fall.After relegation, Yeovil changed too much too quickly. They signed 29 players in one season on either loan or free transfer deals.
In March 2022, Sarll, a popular guy working in difficult circumstances, left Yeovil for Woking. Eight years earlier, Woking were operating in a different world to Yeovil. Now they were poaching their manager who considered them to be a safer, more sustainable option with more potential for growth. For many, that was the death knell for Yeovil under Priestnall.
But this is a time for peace. “I think supporters are impressed with how much has changed in such a short period of time,” says Perkins. “Within a week, the owner was in the thick of things with a paintbrush in hand helping to rejuvenate Huish Park. The change at the stadium was physical and tangible and you could see a level of care and attention was going into the club that hasn’t been evident in well over a decade.