Curtis is the one manager we unknowingly wanted and so really needed, so the news over that weekend (19th & 20th October) was Christmas come early after another avoid sharp objects defeat at Ashton United by one goal to three. Why? Well the Woodhouse way is a unique one where hard work wins and he had just assembled a triumph at Tadcaster Albion taking them to second thus far with games in hand. Additionally and critically for any hardworking manager at this level he has a little black book with players who are hungry as well as a network of grass roots scouts rather than keen to scheme agents.

Here we have a partially rounded square peg in a round hole, just turned 40-year-old manager, who is looking to bring fresh green shoots thinking to the pyramid people's game, so frustratingly stifled by vested interests and VAR. Hopefully like fellow ex-Blade Neil Warnock he will start at Trinity then go onto the Football League (Neil is just 12 shy of a 1500 league games) and beyond. Warnock still remembers and appreciates that it all started at The Northolme.

The school of hard knocks certainly provides valuable experience for it is well earned and learned. Having lost his football soul before he was thirty Curtis combined inspiration and perspiration to come up champion. Changing sports as his book Box to Box retells, returned Woodhouse to a winning mentality its culmination seeing Curtis crowned British Boxing champion. That formative decade has clearly taught him a few things, his energy and appetite for the game restored he is like a young'un kicking around his first Christmas football.

Football is without doubt about winning, but, although there can only be winners and losers. But that is not set in stone and each day if positive mental attitude is brought into play, just like life almost anyone choosing to try hard enough can and will win. In the harsh bear pit of a midweek NPL fixture it's 10% ability and 90% mental strength. It's the same for the regulars at his Gym, as much about relative health and fitness for folk as it is about the young boxers he has taken under his mercurial wing. Team Gainsborough battle as a unit the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

The maverick in the man means the cavaliering Curtis charges combine to conjure a football brand that is always going to be about, style with an assassins smile, guts and guile, but all the while attack is the best form of defence. This is something the hardworking football fanatics of Gainsborough can identify with and even stretch along to the Yoga.

He inherited a broken side which many outside watchers knew had no legs. Many, not quite all, were seeing out the season for the pay check. Unlike most incoming managers he did not trundle out the fitness line but instead has gradually brought in boxing, circuit training and Yoga - well beyond the warrior pose. Squad decimation in excess of Ceasar with ill-performing legions was inevitable. The refreshing replacements are not badge kissers, they respect the heritage of our club and want to rebuild what many in the game appreciate is an historic institution. They want to put in a shift because the manager has sold them the club and the way forward warts and all.

At a club that seeks to punch above its financial but never historical weight the manager's mantra we fear no one we respect everyone is apt. Curtis freely admits that if the on-pitch fortunes of the famous ex-Football League club had not been in a mess he would not have got a job he is proud to have. Thus the meeting of the minds, modesty, desire and ambition are a match made in heaven just like Gregg Smith his flag ship signing. The Curtis Woodhouse way suggests thrills spills and forward thinking football on the edge.

Article by Neil Gentleman-Hobbs