Promotion is now a must – Flynn

Toolstation NCEL Division One

• Ash Flynn breaks the record for most goals in an NCEL season with two goals in AFC Emley’s 4-1 at Eccleshill United.
• Flynn actually changed his boots at half-time and duly scored within the opening four minutes of the second half. The record breaking goal soon followed.

Record breaking Ash Flynn strikes for goal early on during AFC Emley’s trip to Eccleshill.

He may have the most goals in a season record for the Toolstation NCEL, but history-maker Ash Flynn will look back on this season as a failure if AFC Emley don’t win promotion in April.

The unstoppable striker broke Kieran Debrouwer’s two-year-old record with two quick-fire second half goals in Emley’s win at Eccleshill yesterday – taking his tally to 57 for the campaign. The victory put fourth-placed Emley within touching distance of the automatic promotion spots.

“I don’t think it will be an achievement if we don’t get promoted,” Flynn said. “Daz said ‘if you get me 30 or 40 goals like you did last time around at Emley, I’ll promise that will get us promoted’.

“If I go score 60 or 70 goals and we don’t get promoted, it won’t mean so much. I do think we have a good chance either by the play-offs or automatically because we have a good squad.”

Flynn previously hit 42 goals in the 2012-13 season for Emley before going on to play for Shaw Lane Aquaforce and Frickley Athletic. He returned to the Welfare Ground last season, but struggled for goals. Since August it has been a different story and 50 goals was reached by Christmas. A few more goals since put him on the brink of the record and Emley supporters turned up at Eccleshill expecting it to be broken. Flynn missed a glorious to equal it in the first half before the inevitable two goals in the opening ten minutes created history. Flynn has an explantation for the rapid start to the second half.

“I had a bad first half so I swapped my boots at half-time, I don’t know if that was a difference,” he said. “Kieran then crossed the ball and it landed perfectly for me to side-foot it in.

“The boots I changed into are the ones I have been wearing all season because I don’t normally wear studs because I have biscuit ankles so I changed to rubbers and it worked out.”

The only downside was that his girlfriend was not on the terraces watch him score the record-breaking goal, despite a request to wait.

“My girlfriend wasn’t here to see it because she’s looking after my little cousin and they didn’t want to come and watch football,” he said. “She actually did say ‘hold back scoring’ until I’m there to watch and she said the same before I got my 50th at Bottesford.”

Taking the NCEL goals record is a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for the striker, who had the good, the bad and ugly in publicity terms in 2015. He started the year making national headlines after his bank claimed that he had passed away. Flynn’s now infamous ‘Panenka’ penalty against Hemsworth on the NCEL Easter GroundHop has been seen by millions all over the world. That was the bad and ugly and now his luck has changed.

“There’s been some negative publicity with the chipped penalty which went global,” he added. “I also had the bank calling me dead, but now it is starting to look up I guess.

“I’ve had the last laugh in a little way because everyone laughing at me for the chipped penalty and I’ve now gone onto score 57 goals.”