Alan Marriott (Rushden, released)
There are few words that can do justice to the anger I felt when Alan Marriott was released, unceremoniously, just one year shy of his testimonial year. The problem for me was that Peter Jackson had no reason to let Mazza go; he was still a solid keeper at our level, and he had lots of years left in him. He had kept more than 100 clean sheets for the Imps, and played more than 350 matches. Still, what was Peter Jackson’s first signing when he arrived at the club? Keeper Ben Smith. Not defenders, to stop the flow of goals, not a striker to prop up our failing forward line, a keeper, to replace a pair of safe hands. Baffling. It was even more frustrating when he let Mazza go at the end of the season, and brought in Rob Burch, a decent keeper, but no better than the man he replaced.
As if to rub salt in the wound, Mazza went on to play 200 matches for Mansfield, where he was an FA Trophy finalist (2011), a National League play-semi finalist (2012) and finally a promotion winner 2013. He was also in goal for them in the FA Cup game which saw us eliminated and miss out on a game with Liverpool. I’ll never quite understand why Peter Jackson wanted rid of Mazza so much.