THE goalposts have moved for Andy Booth – not that the popular striker is bothered.
It was thought that the 34-year-old had got to within 11 goals of Jimmy Glazzard’s second-best-ever Town tally when he notched his 142nd for the club (and 125th in the league) to cement last Saturday’s 2-0 home win over Walsall.
But while some sources say Glazzard got 153, Town expert and keen statistician John Ward, one of the team behind the excellent ‘99 Years and Counting’ centenary book, puts the figure at one more.
That means Booth, whose ninth strike of the season celebrated the award of a new one-year contract from manager Stan Ternent, still needs 12 to match Town great Glazzard, whose haul (142 in the league, 12 in the FA Cup) came between 1946-56.
And he’s 17 behind the best-ever club tally of 159 by George Brown, the strike star of Town’s celebrated title hat trick teams who got 142 in the league and 17 in the FA Cup between 1921 and 1929.
“It’s great just to be compared to those two players,” said Booth ahead of tomorrow’s final match of the League I campaign at Luton, when he’ll be aiming to add to an overall career haul of 176 (he netted 34 times for Sheffield Wednesday between 1996-2001.
“But I’m not really into targets, and I only think about how many I’ve got over the years when the Examiner writes about it!
“All I’m interested in is the next goal and the team winning, and hopefully both will happen down at Luton tomorrow.
“They’ve had a tough season on and off the pitch, and they were condemned to relegation a few weeks ago, but they’ll be determined to go down fighting, and Kenilworth Road has never been an easy place to go because it’s so tight.”
Town are seeking a fourth successive win, and eight away from home (20th in all) and a fifth double (after Yeovil, Bournemouth, Millwall and Bristol Rovers).
And Booth is eager to ensure his hometown club have a chance of a top-10 League I finish.
“Despite doing well of late, we seem to have been stuck in 12th place,” he said.
“It depends on results elsewhere, but if we can get the win, we’d have a chance of making the top 10, which would be pleasing.
“I have to admit, you start to think what if we’d started playing like this earlier in the season, but all we can do now is try and finish with some momentum and ensure we hit the ground running next time around.”
Ternent says he sees Booth as an integral part of his squad for the 2008-09 centenary campaign, and the player insisted: “I’ve definitely got another season in me.
“I’m really happy to have signed my contract, and I think we’ve got every reason to be optimistic as a club.
“The managerial situation has been sorted out, we’ve got a decent squad to which the gaffer will no doubt add during the close-season and the season-ticket offer has created a real buzz. Everything is in place for us to take off.”
