FOOTBALL: Team comes first for Jamie (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

FOOTBALL: Team comes first for Jamie

7:30pm Thursday 2nd February 2012 in Wiltshire Sport

JAMIE Bayes insists that his only concern is the fortunes of Devizes Town and will happily step aside if his club chooses not to appoint him as permanent manager.

The Nursteed Road caretaker boss, who stepped in to fill the void left by Mark Love last December, led his side to their second consecutive victory last weekend as Town hauled themselves to just a point behind second-from-bottom Wellington.

Bayes, 27, has overseen three wins in Town’s last five matches since the turn of the year.

But despite admitting that he would relish the chance to manage the Nursteed Road club on a permanent basis, he remains focused on the job of leading Town away from the lower reaches of the Toolstation League First Division.

“I was in the chairman’s ear (Shaun Moffat) on Saturday talking about me still being the caretaker,” said Bayes.

“But I really just want the club that I’ve been with since I was nine to do well.”

Bayes, who lives in Potterne and had previously been manager of Devizes reserve side for 14 months, said: “If the club decide that they want someone else to take over who’s better than me then that’s fine and I’ll be happy to go back to taking care of the reserves or something like that.

“We were six or seven points adrift when I took over so I’m happy that we’ve closed the gap and hopefully we can carry on picking up the points.”

Chairman Moffat said: “We don’t want to get carried away but Jamie’s done well in stabilising the team and I’d like him become the permanent manager.We’ll see how things go for now and take it from there.”