Bury Town goalkeeper coach Ben Mayhew credits Soccer AM for non-league career
Ben Mayhew thought his football days were behind him before the age of 30, but a late call from the Soccer AM production team gave the ex-forward an unlikely reprieve.
The 37-year-old, who is now a goalkeeping coach and back-up keeper for hometown club Bury Town, admitted he never took football seriously when he was younger.
Instead he preferred to spend his time playing poker – and even then, his focus was more on scoring goals as opposed to stopping them.
Ben, who grew up in Bury St Edmunds, has described himself as an attacking midfielder-striker before a series of knee injuries curtailed his ability to get about the pitch.
Not wanting to completely walk away from the sport, Ben donned a pair of gloves and turned out for a local village side before a friend asked him for a favour that would change his life.
He told Fen Regis Trophies: “Just by chance I ended up going in goal for a few games for the local village team and I didn’t think anything of it.
“I did that for a couple of years, on and off, and then out of the blue a friend of mine, who’s a friend with a member of the production staff at Soccer AM, said they were looking for a goalkeeper.
“It was because somebody dropped out, so I said ‘yeah, I’ll get involved in that’. Being on the live show, I thought that’d be quite good fun.”
Soccer AM, a long-running cult Saturday morning show broadcasted on Sky Sports, has been hugely popular with football fans for nearly three decades until it held its final show in May.
After joining the iconic program in January 2017, Ben recalls receiving the call to step in as a last-minute replacement.
“I did really well and they asked me back the following week to do some shoots and we did one with Jamie Vardy.
“We did one with Emile Heskey, a few with the older Chelsea players, and The F2Freestylers.
“It got me back in love with football again and I ended up joining a local semi-pro club.”
Ben joined Ely City and was part of the squad that won the Cambs Invitation Cup in 2018, defeating Cambridge United’s Development team 2-1 in the final held at the Abbey Stadium.
The goalkeeper soon began training more regularly and his passion grew ever stronger and following a couple of moves from leaving Ely, Ben found himself signing for his hometown club in Bury Town.
Ben’s love for his local team is clear and since beginning to volunteer his time away from the football pitch as well as on it, he admits that his eyes have been opened to the value of having the local community supporting their club.
He said: “Now and again, I’ll go down to the club and help with something around the ground and see the same faces down there. Without them, the club would cease to exist.”
“Joining semi-pro football has certainly opened my eyes to the amount of work that goes into the running of a football club. It’s quite staggering really.
“The players take a lot of credit when, in fact, they’ve been given a platform to play on by a team of volunteer, they probably don’t get enough credit.”
Prior to the appointment of former Bristol City and Ipswich Town midfielder Cole Skuse, Ben accepted that the new manager may have preferences about the squad he inherited.
“Once they appoint a new manager, then you have to wait to find out if the new manager wants you…he might not want a slightly overweight 37-year-old knocking about in training.”
Whatever the future holds for Ben, he is fully aware that he has been fortunate to have enjoyed being allowed to play football at a semi-professional standard and signing for his hometown club.
When the curtain falls on Soccer AM after nearly three decades on air, few will have more reasons to be thankful than Ben for the show’s indisputable influence on football over the years.