WHEN a cheeky Welsh lad – described as a nomad by peers – sat in Alvington with the sustenance of a new diet imported from time in Spain, people asked questions. Then, they listened.

It was the start of an interesting but rather unusual period at Yeovil Town for Nathan Jones, with some occurrences that you expect to see more in Sunday league than League One.

The Somerset side’s ladies team was the very start of Jones’s coaching, and he is credited, alongside Sarah Lawler, with laying down initial foundations for their rise to the Women’s Super League.

But it resulted with left-back Jones and a close teammate – his central defender, in fact – managing the team to survival again and again with a budget paling in comparison to their opponents.

“What we had to do was be very clever,” Terry Skiverton, a Yeovil Town legend after 23 years as a player, coach and manager, tells the Daily Echo.

Daily Echo: Terry Skiverton (right) celebrating promotion from League One in 2013Terry Skiverton (right) celebrating promotion from League One in 2013 (Image: PA)

“We’d be going away to Southampton with four academy players on the bench. Rickie Lambert up front would have been more than our entire budget!”

Jones arrived at Huish Park from Brighton in 2005, still bringing inspiration from his time at CD Numancia, a promotion-winning third-division Spanish club in Jones’s season, a decade earlier.

Although he was only there between 1996-97, a medium protein, low carbohydrate and high vegetable diet learned in the province, around 150 miles south of Bilbao, became a staple.

Supplemented by an increased focus on working the core muscle group, Jones remained the fittest player in Yeovil’s squad bar none for the duration of his stay.

“He got into the lifestyle and culture and he saw the methods that were being used out there,” Skiverton detailed.

“He’s obviously a very charismatic guy and he brought in some new ways. He brought all of that to the picture, and always talked about the game in detail.

“I ended up getting into the League One team of the year off the back of living that lifestyle I worked on with Nath and other players.”

Skiverton added a further key detail: “He never told anybody what they had to do, people would just gravitate towards him. He wasn’t a preacher. The proof is in the pudding.”

Teammate Craig Alcock, who would go on to be selected by Skiverton and Jones to be club captain and now coaches in Luton Town’s youth development phase, was a young player making his first steps the season Jones arrived.

“He was the most regimented, diligent person ever when it comes to health and fitness and if anything he was the benchmark for us younger kids,” Alcock explained to us.

Daily Echo: Craig Alcock in 2010Craig Alcock in 2010 (Image: PA)

“There was a group of them who were really good for us younger players. His passion and enthusiasm rubs off on you and he lives and breathes football.”

The will with which Jones kept to his fitness plans are a snapshot of a wider personality trait exposing itself; he is desperate to maximise potential wherever he sees it.

Skiverton credits Jones with doing just that with himself as a player, across a career bearing over 500 appearances – over 200 of those with Yeovil Town – with a mastering of the “subtle arts”.

But how exactly did the left side of the Glovers defence end up managing the team in February 2009, after Russell Slade was relived of his duties in dire financial times?

“I got called up to a board meeting the next day, and I thought the owners were asking me about the new manager,” Skiverton explained.  “They asked me to be the manager instead.

“I think they were under a little bit of pressure at the time. Looking back on it now they just had to pay a manager up so they just went for the cheapest option!

“None of us had any experience coaching and we were thrown into League One. Looking back at it, I wasn’t ready for it, Nathan wasn’t ready for it – none of us were.”

Remove the humble guise, and Alcock’s testimony provides a glimpse of why the Yeovil owners could see a simple, if admittedly affordable, way forward.

“They were obvious candidates because of how much they managed the dressing room anyway, they were more than just players” he said.

“It was to the point where the gaffer at the time didn’t bother too much with it because they policed it themselves.”

Having started a third division campaign for the first time in the club’s history in 2005-06 – the season Jones joined – little Yeovil had seen spectacular times.

Jones captained the side at Wembley for the League One playoff in 2007, but it ended in defeat to Blackpool and an 18th-place finish subsequently followed.

The next likely move between divisions was not going to be a fifth successive promotion but rather a first relegation since 1995.

“I sat down with Nathan and said ‘you know, I’m not sure’, but he’s upbeat and said ‘we can do it we can do it, what have we got to lose,” Skiverton admitted.

“We stayed together in a job where you’ve got all these big clubs and experienced managers in League One,” he added, despite having fought like “cat and dog” to keep the marauding Jones by his side when playing defence.

“That was only because I couldn’t run,” Skiverton joked, before returning to the point at hand: “Supporters would criticise the football but we took our egos out the equation to get the results we needed.”

They recorded 17th, 15th, 14th and 17th-places finishes under Skiverton and Jones before club legend Gary Johnson returned and took the club to an unprecedented Championship promotion in 2013.

It is not easy – and necessarily accurate – to stomach comparisons between now-National League Yeovil and Premier League Saints, but the job Jones does best is the one he has always done.

Sport Republic have said as much themselves; Jones and his team will not have a big budget. They will compete for survival in a division where the majority of sides dwarf them.

What Jones is credited for by Skiverton at Yeovil is resourcefulness.

He used his own contacts to get in at Tottenham Hotspur and secure the loan signings of Ryan Mason, Steven Caulker and Andros Townsend.

Other friends of his are big agents of the English game. Luke Ayling, Asmir Begovic and even current Saints goalkeeper Alex McCarthy made their league debuts at Yeovil with Jones.

Daily Echo: Southampton's Alex McCarthy during the pre-season friendly match between Southampton and AS Monaco at St Mary's Stadium. Photo by Stuart Martin..

He got them to buy-in – a phrase Jones has used regularly in his two press conferences at Saints. In what could be a breaking dressing room after gradual decline, he must stitch them together.

“The biggest thing he did was develop players in a live environment, and he knew how to adapt, how to talk to players – we had players that weren’t ours, giving their all,” Skiverton insisted.

Jones does not have much time on his side at Saints and will need a better tune out of the same players. This football club – sitting second from bottom at Christmas – will be relegated if he does not succeed.

Although he spent just nine months at Stoke City before he was dismissed in 2019, there is significant sympathy towards Jones that it was not the right fit for club or boss.

Just as successful managers Brendan Rodgers and Eddie Howe failed to deliver at Reading and Burnley to the level they have done at their other clubs, Jones’s other roles are a closer representation of what will be needed.

Alcock calls it a “siege mentality” developed at Yeovil that allowed them to defeat the odds. That was largely based on proximity and a lack thereof of competitiveness at that level. At St Mary’s, it will be survival-fuelled.

“We had a group of real youngish players and some older players, but we’d find a clever way of playing and if teams would work us out we would sit down and analyse and change again,” Skiverton added.

“His coaching on the grass and analysis is second to none, but also talking to different people he has real good empathy and can handle difficult people as well. A lot of the best players are characters, and he manages characters.”

Despite Jones departing Yeovil by mutual consent in 2012, going on to fully start his coaching career with former club Brighton, and Skiverton staying until 2019, the pair have remained close.

In fact, Jones is Godfather to Skiverton’s youngest son – he’ll always pick up the phone and they have interacted since Jones was revealed to be Saints manager at the start of last month.

Skiverton has a track record of pestering Jones for loans and an already existing relationship with Saints academy manager Matt Hale could see that continued again.

“As soon as he got the job, I sent him a message. Straight away I said ‘all the best, it’s well deserved,” Skiverton added.

“I can’t tell you what he come back with but the first thing was how he was gutted to leave Luton, but sometimes you get opportunities you can’t turn down.”

Jones has already demonstrated what he will look to bring to the table. At each of the two Saints youth games that have taken place since first-team training resumed – an under-18s clash at Staplewood on Monday and under-21s at St Mary’s this Friday – he was spotted in attendance.

There are suggestions Jones has already held firm conversations with his players over the events of the months leading up to his appointment. And if history repeats itself, they will have listened.

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