When John Elliott began our interview by describing last season as the “worst I can remember” at Oxhey Jets it was clear he was in no mood to pull any punches. That frank honesty continued in the next hour of our conversation as the club’s general manager was often passionate but considered as he explained why Jets had reached a crossroads and changes had been necessary this summer.

The Spartan South Midlands League outfit’s results last season would be reason enough for a shake-up in many people’s eyes – they pulled off a proverbial great escape to preserve their Premier League status – but Elliott runs much deeper into what he views as an erosion of the ethos on which the club has always been run.

Since founding Jets in 1972, Elliott’s philosophy has always been that it is much more than a football club. He remains intensely proud of the role it plays in the South Oxhey community and has always believed in helping others whenever possible. But experiences over the past couple of years have left the former Kodak photo training specialist feeling “battered and used” and led him to re-evaluate Jets’ standing, although he continues to refuse to take it fully down the road of being ‘another football club’.

“I thought last season was the worst season I can ever remember,” he reflected. “Not just football but it was the least enjoyable for commitment from people coming back to the club as well. I don’t care if people don’t drink but there really was no support coming out.

“It’s easy for us to sit here and say ‘the youth of today, it’s all take’, but it was all take – ‘I’ll play this week, I’m going to a concert next week and then I’m doing that’. It was hopeless and I never want to see the club again like it was last season if I’m honest.”

He may have become disillusioned but Elliott has acted to bring in new blood during the close season, including the recruitment of former Kings Langley reserve boss Lee Stedman to work alongside Bob Wyatt as joint first-team manager.

“We needed an input from outside,” Elliott remarked. “We had a long talk with Lee Stedman, he was looking to move up into first-team football and it fitted nicely because we wanted a fresh input of people. It really did need a fresh input of people as well because I think people have got too complacent. Maybe even with the facilities, people don’t know what they’ve got until they move on and don’t have it somewhere else.”

But the new broom hasn’t been restricted to just first-team level. Having launched and developed the Oxhey Jets Academy, Warren Gladdy has taken over as reserve-team boss. The aim, as Elliott explained, is to establish a structure and continuity for the future of the playing side.

“We looked at the whole thing, the academy was so successful and it’s about which way to take the club now,” the general manager said. “So what we looked at was somebody new coming in with the first team and hopefully bringing in a big of input of new people. And that big input of new people then combining with what hopefully comes through and will be a younger future for the club.

“Ideally the reserve side next year will be players that are good enough to go in the first team or will one day be good enough to go in the first team. One of Warren’s philosophies is there’s no point playing somebody that will never be a first-team player in the reserves if there’s a young player that’s not being driven by results for a season that can be given the grounding to come through and move up.”

Asked where he sees the position of Jets currently, Elliott responded: “I think it’s at a big crossroads at the moment. We’ve always been very much for the old school, the local people, go out in the middle of the night and pick them up if you need to, but I think we’ve felt probably battered and used over the last two years more and more that I question the loyalty that is in and around the players and the youngsters now.

“So I think the decision we’ve made to appoint Lee and to get a bigger input from the academy is probably going to move away from the roots of the club which was always we’ll do anything for our players that we humanly can because I don’t think 90 per cent of them appreciate anything that is done anyway.

“Maybe the outlook of modern life isn’t what I respect as much now and it’s a shame that you cannot have the friendships that you used to have with people because the loyalty is completely lacking, so it makes you become more mercenary.

“I think it’s going to change and we’re going to become slightly more of a football club but I don’t want it to go the full route of being a football club because that’s never been what the Jets are about. It’s always been about a mass community set-up, but it will change and it has to change.”

As well as being unhappy with what’s happened to his club, Elliott has become increasingly disenchanted with the growing tendency for South Midlands clubs to pay players and the knock-on effects it’s had. And he is concerned about what it may mean for the future.

“I think it’s ruining the league,” he said bluntly. “This level of football always had one or two people doing a little bit of boot money but the £80, £90, £250 I heard in one case, that to me isn’t good at this level of football. And the trouble is there’s no way back from it.”

Jets do not pay their players and Elliott continued: “I think there’s going to be some casualties in our league if they continue paying, but there are a number of clubs that can’t. Some that do are feeling the pinch.

“I think what will happen this year if what I’m hearing is true is there’s going to be the top four who are paying a lot of money and are really going to go for it and the rest of the league will be the rest of the league.

“Where you don’t pay you’re going to have to accept you’re going to be a picking ground for clubs above you and you should accept players want to go up and better themselves but they shouldn’t be jumping around this league for that sort of money.”

Although Elliott’s faith has been tested in several respects, this has been counter-balanced by what has been achieved by the academy in its first year.

The academy’s website states its purpose is “to provide an opportunity for 16 to 18-year-old boys to train like elite young footballers whilst continuing their studies towards a Level 3 BTEC in Sports Performance and Excellence”.

Twenty-four students were taken on in the first year and explaining why it was set up, Elliott said: “Many people have said to me there would be a lot more people in trouble with the police and so on if Jets wasn’t here. The boxing club is one, the scouts are the other, but I don’t think there’s anything much else [in South Oxhey] that has survived the 40, 50-year span especially under the same people. So I’ve got great respect for the few clubs that have survived.

“Warren became available, he’d taken his teaching qualifications and it was the perfect timing to look at doing it and it’s been a great success. I can’t believe how far some of the players have progressed in there and I’d like to think with the change of rules in education there are some people it might give a lot of direction to.

“Even if they’re not the best footballers, they might move on and do maybe youth coaching or even voluntary jobs and become the linesman or the sponge man or the helper. And some of them might get careers out of it, I hope they do.”

More than 50 per cent of the academy intake played senior football last season – at either first-team or reserve level – but some parents were put off by the misconception their sons would be learning in a bar.

The club does not trade during daytime from Monday to Friday to allow education to take place, but the clubhouse is to be modified to accommodate a designated area for the academy for its second year.

Elliott admitted the academy had proved a welcome distraction from the on-field problems at times last season, but he was keen to praise those who helped Jets beat the drop to Division One, as well as Carlsberg and Glowworm Tyres for their support.

He said: “The end of the season became quite exciting because the great escape was pulled off. And I’ll never forget some of those people that came in and helped out and it’s given us a chance to rebuild from the position that we were in.

“If we happen to struggle this year, Lee’s got a lot of young players but they’re two to three years older than our youngest players, but I really hope he’s a long-term appointment, he stays and he brings that next generation through. That’s my hope and dream within my lifetime, that I see this academy lot come through and have another crack.

“Maybe with some help we can get that little bit of support from a few businesses. It doesn’t take a lot to turn it around, but it’s not as small an amount as people think. If you make the decision to give every player £20 travel money say, it’s £320 per game. I couldn’t find that per game. To put that into the context of running a bar, that’s four times what you’ve got to take to break even. That’s what people don’t realise.”

To find out more about the Jets academy, visit www.oxheyjets.com/oxheyjetsacademy.