Coach's Biography: Paul Cockayne

My love of games goes back to early years, the age of about 4, I suppose, being beaten at chess again and again by my elder brother and occasionally a kind uncle.  On Sundays the family usually sat down to play a board game; Monopoly, Cluedo and Risk were favourites, and we’d often play rummy as well.  My mum was a lover of patience games and my dad introduced me to the idea of book cricket which occupied many an hour in the pre-computer era.

My secondary school was starting to take chess seriously when I arrived and I found myself playing regularly for school and later county teams.  Later bridge also became popular when the Rev. Davy gave up his struggle to interest his class in Latin or the Divinities.  As I progressed through university chess remained my great passion but in our twenties my wife and I started playing bridge together with some success – until our bridge became rather more successful than our marriage in fact.   I continued playing bridge seriously through to the mid 1990s, with even the occasional success at national level.  I did not, however, repeat my mistake by playing with my second wife.  A good decision, as we remain married and mostly friendly after 26 years together.

Sometime in the 1980s I got involved in the postal games hobby, initially playing Diplomacy and then, later, United and pretty much any other game that was going.  For about four years I ran my own postal games zine “On the Game”, which won the UK zine poll a couple of times.  It was in this period that I met Alan Parr, the originator of United (and still running a game to this day), and like me, a huge jazz fan.  In fact, Alan and I once went to a football match together, Tring Town v. Wokingham, in the basement level depths of the English league pyramid: a win for Tring, 3-1 as I recollect. I think the spectators outnumbered the players but I can’t be sure.

Family, house moves and career changes put an end to my games playing for a while around 1996, until about a year ago when I started playing bridge again and renewed my interest in games through the computer world.   Things have gone full circle, in a way.  I find myself playing a bit a chess again, and when my two sons (now 26 and 24) are home we will invariably pull out a board game (but no longer Monopoly, I’m pleased to say).

Season 16

Wycombe’s first season under Paul Cockayne’s management might be remembered as the start of an era, but won’t be remembered for the team’s achievements.  The wooden spoon was avoided, but only by one place, with only 3 wins and 4 draws.  The other 11 matches were lost, some by a significant margin, as a goal difference of -18 suggests.  The club did, if anything, even worse in the cup competitions, losing all their matches bar one – a Shield victory against non-league Coventry City.  Looking forward, we have made a start, and in Holmes, Rowe and Thompson we have three players with the potential to be top class.

Season 18

At the start of the season, we hoped to compete in the league. And would have been content with a mid-season finish – a result that would have been a considerable improvement over the previous season in charge.  I decided to use the various cup competitions to give experience to youth players, and aim to compete in the league matches against clubs I considered potentially beatable.

In the event, our results exceeded our expectations.  Last season our league record was 3-3-12 with a  goal difference of -36.  This time it was 8-5-5 with GD of +13.  Quite a transformation, and by finishing 3^rd in the table we gain promotion to Division 2.

We last played at such dizzy heights back in season 7 (finishing 9^th) and our highest ever league finish, going right back to season 2, was 8^th in Division 2.  So if we are to avoid relegation – and that is likely to be tough – we will, in the process, achieve our highest ever league placing.

Promotion may well have come a season too early, of course, and the lack of CPs could disrupt our coaching plans.  But our strategy is to keep a lean squad, developing 3 schoolboys per season, and this may mean that we can come through a difficult league campaign with our coaching relatively intact – we shall see.

Generally, the squad is in a healthy shape, and we will have a full compliment of BRBs going into the new season.  Our age II players have all been coached to level 13, age Is to level 15, and the apprentices are all at level 10.  And I have reached the dizzy heights of 43^rd in the all time manager’s list!

Season 19

There have never been glory days at Wycombe.  Up to season 18, we had never progressed beyond round 2 of the F.A.Cup and our best shield finish was a quarter-final.  Nor had there been more success in the Alan Parr Cup – always eliminated in the group stages – or the Youth Cup – never progressed beyond round 2 in that competition.  We had spent two seasons in Division 2 – finishing 8^th and 9^th – and the rest of the time in Division 3, collecting the wooden spoon on three occasions.

So to find ourselves once again in Division 2 was a success, in itself, and to avoid relegation would be an all time-high for the club.  After a promising start, our fate was in the balance until the last session, when two wins lifted us out of the relegation zone and into a very flattering 4^th place – flattering because the teams in 4^th to 7^th spots had all scored 24 points.  As well as this, we progressed beyond the group stages of the AP Cup for the first time.

Season 20

We are not quite sure how it happened, but we managed to finish second in Division II, and so are promoted to Division I for the first time in the club's history.  This has come much earlier than expected (if indeed it was expected at all) and it is doubtful whether we will be able to avoid an immediate drop back to Division II.  Our T11 is 15th overall, our T16 19th.  In Division I the ratings are 9th and 10th.  Sadly we have failed to strengthen our squad through the auctions at the start of Season 21, but we will enjoy our time in the top flight, however brief it may turn out to be.

Season 21

Season 21 saw Wycombe in Division I for the first time in their history, but it proved to be a brief stay.  We lost our first four league matches and though we recovered, and even pulled out of the relegation zone, a dreadful finish (one point from the last four matches) saw us finish in 9th place.  Things didn’t go a lot better in the cups.  We exited the Youth Cup in the first round, the AP Cup in the first knockout round, and the FA Cup in the second round.  The truth is that we came up too early.  Back to back promotions left us unready to compete in Division I, and we could now do with a couple of seasons in Division II before we return to the top flight.