AFC Totton
FORMER YEOVIL TOWN midfielder Toby Stephens has become the lastest new recruit to Jimmy Ball’s AFC Totton squad, signing for The Stags from the Western League Premier Division side, Street FC.
Having been in Southampton’s youth academy for about five years, Stephens moved to Yeovil Town and signed his first professional contract for The Glovers as a 17-year-old.
On 08 May 2021, he made his National League debut as a substitute for Yeovil at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground.
By then, he had already taken in loan spells at both Hemel Hempstead Town and Plymouth Parkway, developing skills that — as a young Chelsea fan — he had modelled on the goalscoring midfielder Frank Lampard, while growing up in the village of Ashcott, near Glastonbury, in Somerset.
After being released by Yeovil at the end of last season, he joined Street at Step 5 of the English Non-League pyramid and, still only 21 years-old, set about trying to earn his way back up to the professional levels of the game.
He made a positive impact in his first outing in an AFC Totton shirt by scoring on his debut for the Under-23s to round out a 4-1 home win over Dorchester Town in the Hampshire Combination & Development Football League U23 Premier Division encounter at the Snows Stadium in November, and he went on to play an integral role in The Young Bucks’ 5-0 home win over Weymouth in the same competition the following week.
New AFC Totton midfielder Toby Stephens in action against Chertsey Town in the Southern League Premier Division South match at the Snows Stadium in December 2024.
Between those two U23 appearances, Stephens had been named among the substitutes for the first team squad that made it nearly all the way to Merthyr Town’s Penydarren Park before the match was called off due to the bad weather caused by Storm Darragh. But he only had to wait until 01 December to make his first team debut, coming on for Charlie Austin as a second-half sub in the 2-1 home win over Swindon Supermarine, and then he also featured in the victory over Chertsey Town a few days later.
“Toby’s a player who burst onto the scene as a young lad, playing in the National League and in the National League South several times,” explained Stags boss Jimmy Ball.
“He sort of fell off the map a year or so ago, as can happen to young players. I had a look at him during pre-season and I was scratching my head as to why he was playing at that sort of level rather than in the Southern League.
“I managed to have a good chat with him and came to understand why that might have been, and having had him watched a couple of times, I’m certainly hopeful that with a bit of hard work from both the player and the coaching staff, a bolstered confidence and a renewed sense of self-belief, we can get that player back out of him that promised so much as a teenager.”
Let’s hope so. Welcome to AFC Totton, Toby.
By Ben Rochey-Adams
Image courtesy of Sayers Sports Photography
