Even in non-league, signing players means dealing with agents, some of whom are a compulsory part of any deal but there are also time-wasters aplenty


Sitting at the garden table of the home they moved into in January, Hayley chips in: “To be honest, I don’t know any different and during the week it doesn’t bother me, but on Saturdays I find it really hard when he’s not here.


“So if I can find someone to look after


Raff for a few hours, we just go to the matches if they’re playing at home.”


Sundays are family days, running the


children to and from their hobbies and interests. Fran is already in the Maidstone youth set-up and loves his football.


Wearing sunglasses, she looks at Jay


and says: “Well, we can only take holidays in May and June and even then Jay is always on the phone trying to secure player transfers and doing club stuff.


“But you’re not as bad as you used to


be. I’ll give you that.” Fifi’s birth coincided with a playing


trip to Halifax in midweek when he was with Margate.


“I got home at silly o’clock and was


absolutely knackered. I still had my training kit on trying to get my head down when Hayley wakes me and says we have to go to the hospital.”


With Fran, Jay was unexpectedly declared fit by Gravesend and Northfleet ahead of a long journey north to play Morecambe when Hayley was about to give birth to their first son.


Rather than take the team coach, he


drove there and back, arriving at the former home in Spot Lane with an hour or two to spare before the home birth.


Football management is a precarious business, never more than a few games from the sack. It also appears to the


outsider to be a stressful business. Does Jay ever get stressed? “No,” he says pointedly. Hayley interrupts: “Jay is the most


laid-back man you will ever, ever meet. Sometimes he comes back from a game and he’s a bit grumpy if they’ve lost or things didn’t go to plan. But nothing seems to get him stressed.”


He adds: “It helps massively to have an understanding wife. It really does. Hayley is so good with the kids and it would be ten times harder to do what I do without that understanding.


Football management is a precarious business, never more than a few games from the sack


“You know, sometimes I miss things with the kids when they have something on at school and that’s bit is hard sometimes.


“But the club has been great to work


for and they understand about families. It’s a family-orientated club.”


Jay was born in Whitechapel in east London, but moved to Kent with his family when he was two, the family living for a time in Leeds village a stone’s throw from The George pub.


Hayley is Maidstone born and bred. The couple met at


Swadelands school, near Lenham, where they were friends, but got together 16 years ago as a couple


and have been married for 12 years. The Saunders’ home is a four-


bedroom house with a decent sized garden. The family need to extend it to have a bigger kitchen and may have to create another bedroom.


With four growing children, there is


evidence of family life all around the garden, with toys and playthings scattered around.


There is a set of kids’ goalposts at the


far end of the garden where Coco displays a decent right foot with Dad as keeper. (He lets them all in, by the way.)


Nearby, Raff seems to have a


fascination for the garden hose which he has worked out how to turn on and squirt.


Yet there is much to be done at the


Saunders’ new home and it is likely to be a work in progress for some time yet.


Extending, rewiring, re-plastering, tidying up the garden and the like, plus the never-ending list of domestic duties that come with a busy family of six.


The house, built in 1891, is perched on a small bank away from the road. It had been the home of a couple who ran a small cattery in the back garden. The husband passed away and the widow decided to sell up.


Hayley says: “A lot of it is not to our


taste and that is to be expected, but it is very homely. We’ll just have to do it a bit at a time. But just about everything needs to be done.”


Jay’s past experience in the building


trade means that he can call on trusted friends to do the work while he says he can chip in with general work, such as tiling.


“Well, if I get time around the football, that is.”


Hayley laughs: “Well, it’ll never get done, then!”


Mid Kent Living 9


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