Paul Arnold – The Nearly Man

Paul Arnold is not a name that will be familiar to most Saints fans, unless that is, you regularly watched Saints Reserves in the mid to late 1970s or took an interest in local Dorset football in the two decades that followed. But “Arnie” – as he was affectionately known to those who played alongside him – holds a unique position in Saints history as no other player has played as many games for the Reserves without making the first team or going on to feature in League football for someone else.

Paul played 115 games (plus 2 sub appearances) for Saints Reserves (1975-79), mainly in the back four and was remembered by Colin Hill, a fellow Dell apprentice as being “a bit of a Rolls Royce type of player”. Colin goes on to try and explain why Arnie was never called up into Lawrie McMenemy’s first team, “he was a bit like me probably, in that he never had the physical part of the game you needed, especially with him playing in a back four”.

Paul (born in 1957 in Bournemouth who he originally joined as a schoolboy) is philosophical about missing out on a first team chance “there were a lot of good players around in those days, Mel Blyth and Jim Steele at first then Chris Nicholl, Malcolm Waldron and Mike Pickering”. He recalls being summoned to the manager’s office in the summer of 1979 to be told that he was about to be released. McMenemy informed him that Reuben Agboola was “pushing him and so we’re letting you go” and with those words the curtain was lowered on his Dell career.

But as one door shuts another opens and Paul now joined Weymouth where, over the next decade, he became part of the fixture and fittings pulling a Terras shirt over his head nearly 500 times.

Then, in the summer of 1988, he was working his way back to fitness after injury and was offered the chance to join Lew Chatterley’s Poole Town on loan. Two months later he was called in to see the Chairman and, after expecting the offer of a permanent playing contract, emerged from the meeting as the new Poole Town manager, Chatterley having departed to join Ian Branfoot at Reading.

That started a long and highly-respected managerial career in local Hampshire/Dorset football that took in Dorchester, Bashley, Brockenhurst and Wimborne, all while simultaneously setting up and running his own builder’s business. Paul’s career doesn’t feature in www.saintsplayers.co.uk but he deserves more than a “mention in dispatches” for serving the club’s second string with style and distinction without ever being given the chance to shine on a bigger stage.