The story of Harry Redknapp, a hypnotist and ‘Britain’s best and worst team’ sounds as if it should be confined to the world of fantasy.
But this is the true story of how Cwm Albion, Swansea’s oldest football team, turned their desperate fortunes around.
Last season the Welsh minnows lost every match and finished the season with a goal difference of -191. That struggle was nothing new either. Goalkeeper Jamie Macdonald has never kept a clean sheet in his ten years at the club.
It seemed like a miracle would be needed to turn the tide, but a former Premier League manager with almost 1,400 games to his name was a good place to start. And after a few tips from Redknapp, the team soon ended their three-year winless drought.
Then, with the help of Specsavers, they enlisted the expertise of leading hypnotherapist Zoe Clews to tackle some of the mental baggage that some players had accumulated during that losing streak.
Harry Redknapp signed up earlier this season to help Cwm Albion, Britain’s worst football team
After securing their first win in three years, they went the extra mile by hiring a hypnotist – and it has had a transformative effect on their form.
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“This is the great thing about Cwm Albion, they have incredible resilience,” says Clews, who has more than 20 years’ experience in her field.
“They’ve lost all those games, but they just keep going. That resilience is one thing, but it’s really exhausting. It’s mentally exhausting because there’s no positivity. It’s just pure grit.
“And then, when everyone gets that feeling, it’s a team sport, so it’s contagious.”
How can hypnotherapy transform amateur footballers who are more accustomed to the bitter taste of defeat than sweet victory?
Clews assures Mail Sport that no stage hypnotherapy – the kind that makes them ‘think they are a dog, on all fours and barking’ – was used on Colin and Chris, two of the team players.
“What you do with hypnotherapy is you clear away the negative things and then you anchor these really positive states,” she explains.
‘But people do have specific triggers. Colin had a lot of fear. He would catastrophize and imagine the worst happening. He would have a specific trigger, so when he went to get his kit ready on match day, he would feel a real feeling of butterflies in his stomach.
‘That was very different from Chris, whose problems had more to do with concentration and focus. He started to focus on what everyone else was doing. My job was to put that into his subconscious so he could keep the energy up.”
Cwm Albion’s players have had issues such as anxiety, which has made playing sports more difficult for them
Jamie Macdonald has been at the club for ten years and has failed to keep a clean sheet
Last season the Welsh minnows lost every match and finished the season with a goal difference of -191
The mix of coaching (Garry Monk pictured, left) and therapy has helped Cwm Albion achieve better things
While this may have seemed like one of Clews’ toughest assignments to date, the results speak for themselves. Since working with Clews, Albion FC defeated Bonymaen 3XI 7-1 and last weekend they beat St Thomas Stars FC 4-2.
‘I’m used to working with difficulty, because I’ve been doing it for twenty years and I get very strange problems. They were really great to work with and they really wanted change,” says Clews.
‘This is the beauty of hypnotherapy and hypnosis: you don’t really have to believe in it because of how it works. You just have to want to change. I didn’t find it difficult to work with them, I just found it really fun and rewarding.’
This season, Specsavers’ best and worst team, Cwm Albion, have had an unforgettable season. Follow their progress on the Best Worst Team YouTube Channel.