Antonio Corbisiero on the switch to management, the season so far, and the future of the league
Antonio Corbisiero. Image: Colin Ewart
Aberystwyth Town appointed Antonio Corbisiero at the start of the season, hoping to turn around the team’s fortunes after underachieving over the last few years.
Corbisiero steps into management with plenty of experience of playing in the league. Corbiserio made over 200 appearances in just under a decade with Llanelli, before a three-year spell playing for Aberystwyth.
He was part of a title-winning Llanelli squad that included the likes of Rhys Griffiths, Andy Legg, and Chris Llewellyn, but since then the league has attracted more former internationals.
“I was fortunate to play in a good side with Llanelli, and since then the league has gotten a lot more physical. The change to artificial pitches has changed how teams play, it used to be that you could play balls into the box and it would maybe hang there a bit more, but now if you play a ball down a channel on a greasy day, it runs straight out.”
“Teams signing the likes of Dave Edwards and Jazz Richards is a massive credit to the league, and I think we’ll see a lot more ex-pros coming into the league now.
“The potential for European football is a big attraction, like maybe some players who didn’t achieve that in their professional careers could come to the Cymru Premier for the experience of playing in Europe.”
Whilst this is Corbisiero’s first full season in management, he has spent plenty of time learning from others. He spent last season assisting Gavin Allen at Aber, and prior to that he was Gari Lewis’ assistant at Penrhyncoch.
Having spent so long as an assistant himself, Corbisiero emphasised the importance of his coaching staff, which includes the likes of former Aber and Swansea defender Stuart Jones, and former Penrhyncoch manager Gari Lewis.
“There’s a lot more pressure with management compared to being an assistant as it’s my name at the head of it. I had a lot of experience as an assistant with Gari Lewis who’s now assisting me, and obviously, Gavin Allen asked me to be his assistant too so it’s been good to work under a lot of different people.”
“We’ve got a great coaching staff here and we all have different ideas coming together and they all have their input, so it’s not just my voice that’s heard.
“We look at the opposition when picking our teams, for example, we might pick a certain player to counter a particular threat, but overall we try not to change the team too much.
“Bari Morgan and Dave Owen are great on the analysis side of things, they’ve been looking at Barry’s recent games to give us an idea of how they’ll play.
“We have Stuart Jones, who obviously has plenty of Cymru Prem games under his belt and he’s mainly working with the back five, and then obviously Gari Lewis is a great motivator as well.”
Eleven games into the season, Aberystwyth finds themselves 11th in the table, four points away from safety. Only Cefn Druids have scored less than Aberystwyth’s five goals, and according to Corbisiero, that’s the difference between them and their opponents.
“With the players we’ve brought in, and retained from last season, we had very good expectations, and obviously no team sets out to be sitting in the bottom two so we’ve been disappointed with how it’s been so far.
“In my opinion, we haven’t been battered by any team yet, and it’s a case of other teams just being more clinical than us.
“We’ve had plenty of chances, but the difference between us and other teams is the others have been ruthless. The only way we can get out of this is by taking our chances.
“Last week Flint had three chances and took two, whereas we had nine or ten shots on target and only scored one.
“We’ve conceded five goals from the last two games and they’re all from errors, so that’s something we need to work on. Other teams haven’t made those mistakes and we’ve had to work on creating our chances, so that’s something we need to cut out of our game.
One of the main characteristics of Aberystwyth’s squad is the number of local players they have, with the likes of Jack Rimmer, Lee Jenkins, Mathew Jones, and Jonathan Evans all from the local area.
“We’ve made a deliberate effort to have the local squad that we have. I believe we’ve got all the best local players which helps us as it means a lot more to them, as it’s their club too.
“Attracting players from further away is difficult, as we’re about two hours from the north and two hours from the south, so to have so much local talent at our disposal is a massive help.”
Aberystwyth travel to Barry this weekend, having won 2-1 in the reverse clash on the opening day of the season. Prior to that, Aber hadn’t beaten Gavin Chesterfield’s side since the Linnets rejoined the top tier in 2017.
However, that’s not something that’s weighing too much on Corbisiero’s mind.
“Our record against Barry isn’t the best, but it’s a fresh season and we started off well against them in the opening match. For me, Mike Lewis was the man of the match in the opening game, and we would have scored a lot more if it wasn’t for him.
“It’s a fresh season so we don’t consider the old results too much, and we just take each game as it comes.”
