HENRY SNEE

‘’The best moment of my career so far’’—that was the reaction of Henry Snee to his 88th minute winning goal at Banbury. What a great time to score your first goal for Hitchin Town but it was an even better achievement for Henry as he had only flown in from New York al 11.00am on Saturday after a six hour flight. I spoke to Henry this week to get the full story and I also discussed his football career to date so supporters get to know his background.

If you thought it was odd that Henry had flown to America during the football season there was a good reason. He suffered a bad injury pre-season that I will explain later and he never expected he would have returned to playing as early as he did so he booked his holiday in the full expectation that he would still be sidelined. He went to America on 27th October returning last Saturday after that six hour flight. He had contacted interim manager Michael Jones at training on Thursday to make himself available for the Banbury game. Henry said he suffered bad jet lag after the long flight and was struggling to keep his eyes open and he managed to get two hours sleep before his father dove him to Banbury. He was on the bench and gradually felt more alert. When the call came to enter the game you would never have known how tired he was as he made an immediate impact and ended up the hero of the hour. He said he certainly slept well that night!

An interesting fact Henry told me was that this was the fourth time he had flown back from America on a Saturday morning and played football in the afternoon and remarkably he scored in three of those games, including a goal when Shefford beat Grays in an important FA Cup tie.

Back to Henry’s injury and it happened in one of the first training sessions of the pre-season. He was diagnosed with Hoffa’s Fat Pad Syndrome which is a problem that affects one of three pads of fatty soft tissue that lies under the kneecap. There is no obvious treatment but Henry had an MRI scan followed by an injection in the knee to relieve the pain and then he needed to build strength in the knee. He was out for three months and that was so frustrating for him as he so wanted to make an impression at Hitchin. Even now he needs to keep working on his knee having played a lot of football in his career so far without knowing how carefully he needed to do his preparation. But he has great self belief and is now really looking to push himself to the best level he can achieve. He likes it at Hitchin and is really keen to make an impact.

Henry’s career in youth football started at Dunstable Town, AFC Dunstable and Barton Rovers often with his father as manager. He had a brief spell at the Luton Town academy when he was 13. He made his senior football debut at Barton in the 2017/18 season when he was 17. But to ensure he got regular fist team football he decided to join Shefford for the 2018/19 season. He started in the reserves in the Beds County League at step 8.He was called up to the first team in the 2019/20 season in the Beds Premier League Shefford won promotion to the South Midlands League Division1 with Henry scoring 38 goals.

Mark Burke invited Henry to join pre season training with Hitchin for the 2020/21 season but Henry suffered tendonitis and then covid stopped all football . For the 2021/22 season Henry came back to Hitchin and made his debut in the Southern League at Redditch in August 2021. He made 10 appearances but then decided to join Harpenden.. He found this difficult and decided he needed regular first team football so returned to Shefford. They won promotion to the South Midlands Premier Division and had a good FA Vase run. He stayed at Shefford for the 2022/23 season but was then approached by Brett Donnelly to move to Stotfold and the Southern League Central Division 1 for the 2023/24 season. He had a brilliant season scoring 27 goals and followed Brett to Top Field for this season. Who knows how different things may have turned out if Henry had not suffered such cruel bad luck with injury but he is determined to make up for lost time. He played a few games at Biggleswade United to get some match fitness before returning to Hitchin. He has come from step 8 to step 3 which is a massive jump and let us hope he has more improvement to come.