Exclusive: Pompey star Paul Hall joins Romulus coaching staff

NEW ROMS COACH: Paul Hall

FORMER Portsmouth star and Jamaican international Paul Hall has joined the back room staff at Northern Premier League club Romulus theonionsack can exclusively reveal.

Hall, 40, will come in as First Team Coach as the Roms shake things up behind the scenes with current coach Dave Barnett stepping up to the role of joint manager alongside the long serving Richard Evans.

The former Pompey striker or winger returns to the game after a year out following a spell as assistant manager at Mansfield Town, who reached the FA Trophy final, and as coach at Tamworth who got to the 3rd Round proper of the FA Cup.

That came on the back of a successful Football League career, totalling more than 500 appearances and scoring over 100 goals for a succession of clubs including a successful five year stint at Fratton Park.

But he really made his name by receiving the call to represent the Reggae Boyz in the 1998 World Cup with his displays in France earning Hall a £300,000 move to the Premier League with Coventry City before helping another Midlands club Walsall to promotion.

His latest move may raise a few eyebrows, but despite the Roms sitting second bottom of the Northern Premier League Division One South, Hall is relishing the task ahead.

“This will be the biggest challenge of my life,” he said “people may look at that and think it is a strange thing to say with some of the highlights I have had in my career, but that has gone and it is all about now.

“The league position means the lads can’t be very happy at the moment, but that is a good thing, you don’t want people who are happy to be down there struggling.

“We need to create a good atmosphere because wherever I have had success there has always been that togetherness.”

Hall has already got to work, attending his first training session and meeting the players, and insists that the Roms’ young charges were not overawed by his arrival.

“Everyone was very welcoming and it was quite relaxed. I have always considered myself to be one of the lads and I respect these players in the same way I would respect the top players I have played with.

“There are some familiar faces in the squad that I have come across before and we are all in it together. We just need to try and improve what we have done already. We need to make ourselves hard to beat again.

“We’ll set our own targets amongst ourselves but you have to be realistic and remember that we are here for the long term, to build the team and get everyone doing the right things.”

Meanwhile, new joint-manager Barnett added: “The management team are united in achieving better results during the second half of the season.

“The players will get all the information they need and we will be well organised. It is now down to team spirit, hard work, raising confidence and individual standards, so that we become a more consistent, solid unit.”