NEW MANAGER Mark Scopes wants to return Woodbridge Town to the status the club enjoyed under Mick Stockwell.Scopes was reserve team manager for four years when former Ipswich Town and Colchester United player Stockwell was in charge at Notcutts Park.

Nick Garnham

NEW MANAGER Mark Scopes wants to return Woodbridge Town to the status the club enjoyed under Mick Stockwell.

Scopes was reserve team manager for four years when former Ipswich Town and Colchester United player Stockwell was in charge at Notcutts Park.

Woodbridge, members of the top flight for 15 seasons - the second longest unbroken spell in the Premier Division - finished ninth in 2006/07 in Stockwell's last full season in charge before he left the following autumn.

Scopes said: “I want to get the club back to where it was under Mick Stockwell.

“He took this club to another level, but the standard has since dropped, especially in the last six months, and we need to get back to that level.”

The manager's job is one that Scopes, a 46-year-old contracts manager with Haymills, has coveted for some time.

Scopes left Woodbridge to be first-team coach at Felixstowe & Walton United when Steve Potts was manager and Steve Buckle was assistant manager, and last season he was coaching Leiston's Under-18 side, although he did step in and help out Woodbridge Reserves for a while.

His friendship with Buckle, allied to the fact that Buckle was at Notcutts Park last week with his Ipswich Wanderers side for a pre-season friendly, was the catalyst for rumours that he was about to link up with Scopes at Woodbridge.

But Scopes said: “We are good friends and talk about football and chat about players all the time, but he has never been asked about the position.”

Scopes is yet to decide who his assistant will be, although Paul Leech will remain part of the management team and

Peter Trevivian, the former Ipswich Town first-team coach, is currently taking charge of training. Paul Weavers is the new reserve team manager.

Scopes said: “Peter is helping where he can. With his job with the FA, he can't commit 100 per cent, but he is there to help me. I have known him a lot of years and he has coached a lot of the players we have here through the SETEC scheme he used to run so we are on the same wavelength when it comes to football.”

The SETEC scheme, which has proved the lifeblood of the club in recent seasons, is now linked to SIL club Coplestonians, although Woodbridge will still have the pick of players of Ridgeons League standard.

Scopes admitted: “We have got a very limited budget, so players who come here will do so because they want to play the way Woodbridge play.

“In some ways that makes it easier for me because I have not got to convince players to come here.”

Scopes, who was appointed just a week before the season's start, added: “We are playing catch-up, but if we can get the squad I want playing the way I want us to we will start winning more games.

“They are a great bunch of lads and I don't have much to do to get them playing the way Woodbridge are renowned for playing football, but we have got to learn to play football at the right times.”