Former Notts County keeper says move to Basford United was 'no-brainer'

The ‘keeper signed a 12-month deal after leaving Kettering Town, having previously been at Carlisle United and Rotherham United in the Football League, and made his debut for Steve Chettle’s men in their pre-season win over Carlton Town recently.

Penrith-born, he was also a key part of the Notts County squad that lost out to Coventry City in the League Two play-off semi-final back in 2018.

He teams his signing with a role as goalkeeping coach alongside Graeme Rodger and will help oversee the club’s first team and education academy set-up, having previously used their Greenwich Avenue base to run his own academy, AC1 Goalkeeping.

“I knew Chetts [manager, Chettle] from my time at Notts and I have been involved with Basford for quite a few months now,” said Collin.

“I started coaching there with the academy before Christmas, and it took on from there. We had the excellent run in the FA Youth Cup, and we started progressing after we came back from lockdown.

“I was asked to help with the first team, too, so even before we got into any discussions about signing, I was already helping out with the coaching side of things.

“The season at Kettering was curtailed due to Covid, so I was looking for a new club. Chetts wanted me to come on board this season and one thing led to another.

“We spoke about things and thought “why don’t we just put the whole package together and come in as player/coach?’” and it was a no brainer. I was delighted to finally get things over the line.”

And despite focusing a lot of his attention on affairs off-the-field, 36-year-old Collin says he still has the ambition to win silverware and cites the ambition of United as a key reason to joining.

“The club are ambitious – they want to do things and they want to win things and it’s one of the reasons why I joined the club,” he added.

“As much as I talk about coaching and things away from playing, I personally still want to play, and I still want to win things and achieve things.

“I know where this club want to get to. They’ve been very unfortunate with the last two seasons to have them cancelled when they’ve been competing at the top end of the table and it’s a huge reason why I joined.

“We want to get a good pre-season under our belts now and develop the squad to be in a really good place for when the season starts in August where we can hopefully mount a major assault on the league again.”

United’s pre-season continues on Friday night when they travel to Corby Town – managed by former Nottingham Forest defender Gary Mills – before facing a Forest U23 XI on Tuesday, August 20.