Mo Sebbeh - This Is Your (Poppies) Life

With thanks to Graham James for looking at the enigma, wrapped in a conundrum, further wrapped in tracksuit bottoms, and sat on the Poppies substitute bench, that was Mo Sebbeh.  

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"The club is delighted to announce the signing of midfielder Mo Sebbeth. Born in Spain he has played for CF Damm, VA Horta, Redditch UnIted and Stratford Town. Mo is available for selection against Alfreton Town on Saturday."

From this important announcement by the club  in mid -September I thought it would worthwhile reviewing his career so far. Although only 21 years old, as so many players now, he has a few different clubs on his CV already. Last season he finished up at Tamworth and played for them in their unsuccessful promotion play-off game against Kings Lynn. He must have been thrilled then when a team in a higher league came in for him a few games into the season. He must have noticed that we had made a poor start and so probably thought that it would not take him long to get a run in the failing team and help his new club turn things round.

Well, he did not feature in that first game against Alfreton Town, so it may have come as a bit of a surprise when on the following Tuesday he was named as a substitute again even though it was a slightly changed team, and a bit of a given to play fringe players, as we were only playing Cogenhoe in the county cup. A slight step forward in the Kettering career did happen though when he replaced Meikle in the second half. He then reverted back to being an unused substitute for the next three games, despite two of them being the awful performances against Sutton Coldfield.  

During the very brief Kinniburgh/Graham regime he did not even make the bench but all that was to change dramatically when Paul Cox strode into town. In just his second game in charge, away at Guiseley, (Oh I wish I had been there) his life changed - forever. We were leading through two goals by Carta which must have emotionally drained him as he was substituted in the 77th minute. Actually the official report actually said that he was "visibly tiring"! So with Cox noticing this he looked at his bench and saw what his options were. He had the new, inexperienced forward Tre Mitford, two youth team players and Mo. It would be cruel to think that this left him with little choice, but he did come on to make his real first team debut, albeit a full month after signing.

Mo - Scourge of Wellingborough

After this 13 minute, plus time added on, cameo performance however he reverted back to his normal situation of unused substitute. By now, just a few games into Cox's reign though, it was probably already becoming worryingly clear to him that the new manager wasn't the biggest ever user of a substitute. The next game though will go down in the annals of Poppies history, and I am sure that both supporters who went to Wellingborough to see us play the mighty Flourmen will talk about it for days to come. Finally, Mo's name was on the team sheet. Not only that but, having not been substituted - that would have been so cruel - in the last minute, he scored.  

I would not have wanted to have been around, however, when someone had to inform him that Senior Cup games are not regarded as "proper " first team matches, and therefore do not get recorded in official statistics. Now I do not quite understand this as any red cards received in these games still mean that suspensions follow as normal - I refer you to Azza's over exhuberant celebrations when we beat Rushden in the final recently. I am however totally in favour of this anomaly though as a few years ago a certain I.Ladak scored in a County cup game and wouldn't have wanted his name on our club's records for all time.

So, despite this virtual goal a game record, he still could not break his way into the first team and continued much more consistently with him being an unused substitute for the rest of November and the whole of December. This in retrospect, despite Cox's now clear potential migraine reaction to the flashing colours of the garish substitute lights, must have been particularly annoying as there were two games when he was one of the only three players that we could muster to watch the games from the bench.

His career (really, can you call it a career here when only 17 minutes, plus the now very relevant injury time, actually counted?) then went into a common Kettering black hole of information. All of a sudden, his name mysteriously didn't appear on the list of substitutes at Brackley. At this stage nothing untoward was suspected as a new loan signing in Harding replaced him, and of course, you can't expect a club to sign someone on loan and not play him can you?

At the next game, at home to Farsley, however, the inquisitive nature of our fans started to kick into action and the inevitable moaning about the lack of communication from the club lead to people wondering about his whereabouts. Then, someone comes on Facebook and states that Mo has gone to Stratford, Now, I think it is safe to say that you cannot always believe everything you read on social media. I looked into the evidence and found it rather mysterious. I first found reference to this fact on the non-league daily website on January 7th. Very strangely, this was the only reference to it that I could find at the time. The NLD's tweet about his move was retweeted by the official Stratford twitter page but they did not mention it independently on their website, and not surprisingly, we made no reference to it either.

So after about 100 days, 13 minutes and 12 games as an unused substitute his stay may be over - or is it?

BREAKING NEWS 2

Well, after further investigations, it seems as if he played for Stratford on January 4th. His signing for them must be one of the least publicised ever. He also must be the least match-fit player ever as well. Not surprisingly he was substituted in the second half - back to his comfort zone! Wonder when we will announce it.