“Unfortunately he didn’t play enough due to injury and his departure this summer was more saddening than surprising”

One final review of our genius from Wales, plus all of the other defenders to play for County in 2024-25

Jun 28, 2025

Saturday 28 June 2025

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THE SCARF MY FATHER WORE 2025-26 CALENDAR: Having been to all 56 County games this season, I’ve taken thousands of photos. I’ve put together calendars for next season, featuring some of my favourite photos from the last year, plus some other County bits and bobs. £10 each. Get in touch if you’d like one.

Dear County fans, Stopfordians, and anyone else from The Football Family joining us today, a very warm welcome to your Saturday edition of The Scarf My Father Wore.

Earlier this month, we reviewed the 2024-25 performances of Corey Addai and Ben Hinchliffe. (Click here to read the piece.) Today, it’s the defenders.

Today’s edition is sponsored by Riks Fencing & Landscaping. A big thank you to Rik.

Finally, I’m currently walking every street in Stockport to raise money for mental health charity Mentell. If you’d like to make a donation to help me reach my target, please click here.

Total distance so far: 253.75 miles

Total steps so far: 418,084

Total raised so far: £2,312

Total completed streets so far: 474 (Click here for the full list, which includes reports and photos from every day of the walk.)

Further information on the walk can be found by clicking here.

Des Junior

Macca’s equaliser against Birmingham on New Year’s Day was one of the moments of the season (Photo credit: Mike Petch)

Macauley Southam-Hales

20 appearances / 2 goals

The genius from Wales looked better than ever when he played, a highlight being the New Year’s Day draw against Birmingham where he was instrumental in turning the game around.

Unfortunately he didn’t play enough due to injury and his departure this summer was more saddening than surprising. I’ve absolutely loved watching him over the years at County – a worthy successor to another heroic right-back, Sam Minihan. MaSH represents everything that being a County player is about, on and off the field. I’ll miss seeing him tear down the right wing!

Rating: 7/10.

Simon Holt

Ethan Pye

49 appearances / 1 goal

He won every club award he could this season, including the one his colleagues and fellow professionals vote on. That’s my paragraph done for me right there, isn’t it? Still, there’s probably a word count Des wants to get to, so let’s engage in a bit of hagiography.

I love a defender, generally – although I have a current fondness for Woots and Tanto – and Pye has been absolute class for us longer than just this season. A calm, measured presence at the back, his form might have dipped slightly towards the end of the season but only based on his own consistently high standards on that left-hand side. He not only gives us that reassurance at the back, but he has some steel about him too, which almost looks out of place in a player his age. He carries himself in a way that suggests he has more seasons under his belt than he actually does, and he’s not been afraid to dish it out to forwards who’ve tried it on (and clearly loved doing so). He is, as modern defenders need to be, comfortable on the ball and hasn’t been afraid to step out of defence with it when the opportunity presents itself. Despite that, he’s rarely been caught out of position.

Could he have scored more from set-pieces? Maybe. But the one he did score for us in 24-25 (adding a second County goal to the one I think gets bizarrely overlooked at Notts County) was a quality left-foot finish in a crowded box at Shrewsbury that stole a first-half lead we didn’t deserve and set us on the way to three points which looked highly unlikely at that stage.

Given his routinely excellent performances, the general consensus is that he’ll be off very much sooner than later, and you can’t help but feel that not going up this year will only have added to that. I hope he’s got more County years in him, because this is a player who is an absolute joy to watch. However, whenever and wherever he goes, he’s always going to feel like one of ‘ours’, despite having played fewer than 100 games for us so far. That’s what two seasons of sublime football in your early 20s can do.

Rating: 8/10.

Mozzer

Sam Hughes

13 appearances / 0 goals

I felt a little bit sorry for Sam Hughes on his first start for County, chucked into our team full of kids for the visit of Blackburn in the League Cup. With Rovers running rings around us, we were already 4-0 down when Hughes signalled to the bench that he was injured seven minutes before the break. Quite a few Cheadle Enders said something along the lines of “ah, he can’t be arsed with this tonight can he” but I did see him take a knock moments before.

Hughes was Burton’s Player of the Year in 2022-23, and made a huge impact on loan at Peterborough during the second half of this season, helping the Posh keep their first clean sheet of the season on his debut and ultimately steadying the ship to keep them in League One. Clearly a decent defender, just perhaps not the right fit in this current County team.

Rating: 6/10.

Des Junior

Callum Connolly

43 appearances / 1 goal

According to Wikipedia, font of all knowledge, and also the County website (font of less), Callum Connolly is a midfielder. He has played for County as a defender. He has done it increasingly well.

Start of the season he was a bit iffy, if truth be told. Slightly mistake prone at the back. Not offering much going forward. He didn’t look like someone who used to make regular appearances in the Championship. He got much better, and has been solid.

His time in the starting line-up was sporadic. He got a big break when the Horse injured his forelock, and lost his chance when he got himself sent off at Cambridge and Hills turned up. Most of the back end of the season he was on the bench.

Rating: 7/10. Would I be confident if he started every week? Yes. Can we do better? Possibly.

Dan Levy

Tayo Adaramola

10 appearances / 0 goals

“His intent to be positive and run forward with pace will undoubtedly benefit us,” said Dave Challinor when we signed Tayo Adaramola on a season-long loan from Crystal Palace in the summer. The left-back certainly showed those qualities on his debut at Crawley in September, with a number of marauding runs down the left and crosses into the box. Probably our best player on the day.

Looked alright going forward, but wasn’t always the best defensively. To be fair, he missed the start of the season through injury and never got a regular run in the side after that, before being recalled by Palace in January.

Rating: 6/10.

Des Junior

Brad Hills

18 appearances / 1 goal

Some late season loan signings are incredibly successful – take Kevin Cooper, for example, who was an integral part of the ultimate success of 96-97, and became a valuable permanent signing, staying with us for the next few seasons. Others… perhaps less so. Brad Hills falls firmly into the first category.

Looking back on the message board, I'd forgotten that talk of Hills joining us was rife before he actually came. We're as leaky as a particularly useless sieve at County, so he was clearly a player we were after for a while, and based on his performances, he's exactly the kind of player a team with aspirations of playing in the Championship need. He was arguably man of the match on his debut against Barnsley, and looked a class above in most games afterwards, winning Player of the Month in February. Popular too – clapping the fans and kissing the badge and suchlike isn't too difficult a thing for players to do to get easy kudos, but it does tend to work, if you seem to be happy at a club.

An England Under-20 player, and a defender who would clearly be comfortable playing regularly in the league above, he'd be a fantastic signing. There's still a chance we could end up with him permanently, I guess, although that probably largely depends on how Norwich see his future, and how much we'd be prepared to shell out if it was on a permanent basis. Norwich's coach when he was on loan seemed keen that he was part of their future, but with him having recently been flirted, who knows?

Whilst he probably wouldn't get the fanbase as excited as they would if we signed Louie Barry on a similar basis, I think he could be almost as valuable to the team. Everything crossed.

Rating: 9/10.

Dave Espley

Ryan Rydel

22 appearances / 0 goals

Ryan Rydel is still only 24 years old, somehow, despite being with us for a few years now. It's hard to acknowledge that players like him started so young for us. Like, how old was Ethan Pye when he first turned out for us? 11 or something?

Anyway, back to Ryan. He has had a rough time of it with injuries and missed most of the start of the season. I think he made his first appearance as a sub against Forest Green in the FA Cup, so it was November by this time. His third game after returning from injury was THAT game against Bolton where he was soon back whipping in corners and crosses. He is, in my view, the best crosser of the ball we have at the club. It is all about getting him fit, and getting him into the right positions for him to deliver. If you doubt this view, go back and watch the ball he landed on Southam-Hales' head for that equaliser against Birmingham.

Unfortunately, he was just in and out of the team all season. It looked like he just could not get a run of games together. Whether this was down to fitness, after being out so long, or a niggle left over from the previous injury, I don't know. There were some anguished cries when he stepped up to take the penalty against Orient with predictable results, but that was after a run of four consecutive sub appearances and he had the balls to step up and take one.

I love the kid, and we need to get him fit. Rydel firing makes us REALLY dangerous to opposing teams.

Rating: 6.5/10.

Jack Street

Kyle Knoyle

25 appearances / 0 goals

In my humble opinion Kyle Knoyle is one of the club’s best signings in recent years. Signed in the January transfer window of 2023 he was a big part of County reaching the play-off final that season.

County lost just 15 of the 81 games with Knoyle in the side, before his release this summer, having played his part in the club finishing third in League One.

Knoyle’s time at County was interrupted by injury, including an horrific facial injury that almost finished his career. His final season at Edgeley Park was once again an injury prone campaign, but once he returned to the right side of the County team in December, we lost just four of the 23 league games he played in.

Rating: 8/10.

Phil Brennan

Fraser Horsfall

36 appearances / 4 goals

It was a bit of a surprise at the start of the season when Lewis Bate was appointed captain of County. I thought Fraser Horsfall was a much more obvious candidate, although it certainly didn’t seem to have any negative impact on his performances. He was solid all the way through the season. What was different this time was that when the Horse was injured, County didn’t drop off badly. In 2023-24 he missed the match at Tranmere and it was a car crash. This time when the Horse was out for a couple of months in the middle of winter both Hills and Connolly filled in with no real drop off in quality. When Fraser was fit again he slotted into whatever formation we were playing with Pye and/or Hills.

If something was missing in his previous two seasons it was a lack of goals from set-pieces. This season was easily his best with some critical goals, none more so than the header at Brisbane Road in the play-offs.

You can’t blame him for taking the best available contract next season. I’m sure we’re going to miss his consistency next season. You have to trust that the club have a suitable replacement lined up.

Rating: 8/10.

Sandy McGregor

Ibby Touray

50 appearances / 0 goals

Ibby Touray is a strange one. Fans moan when players constantly get injured but in Ibby we had Mr Reliable. Available for selection 99% of the time and gave 100% every time. Had a fantastic start to the season but in the opinion of quite a lot started to fall away. He did have the odd mistake in him throughout the season but the same can be said for every player – it's why they're in the lower leagues! I think his criticism was unjustified and he was made the scapegoat.

Rating: I’d give him 7.5/10 for the season. Gutted he didn't sign a new deal, but I don't think I would have either given the reaction for merely being offered one!

Dave Philbin

Tyler Onyango

10 appearances / 0 goals

If you do any online research on Tyler Onyango, you’ll find most articles refer to him as a midfielder, but as County’s official website stated when we signed him on a season-long loan from Everton in the summer, “he’s reinvented himself as a ball carrying right-sided centre-half”.

The standout memory is unfortunately the penalty he gave away in the first minute at Barnsley, before being hooked by Dave Challinor at the break. But he bounced back with two superb performances against Reading and Forest Green, before his time at EP was cut short due to injury.

Showed real glimpses of his Premier League upbringing at times, and could be a real asset to County this season, with the club expected to announce his return shortly.

Rating: 7/10.

Des Junior

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Photo(s) of the day

Edgeley Park, Stockport

County have been drawn at home to Crewe Alexandra in the first round of the Carabao Cup. Here’s what happened the last time our Cheshire rivals came to town…

Today in SK

🎬 Cinema

One film at The Savoy Cinema (SK4) today. F1: The Movie (12A) at 5pm and 8.15pm. Click here for tickets.

🍺 Food and drink

All pints £2.50 at The Cross Keys (SK8) from 6pm till 9pm.

A number of venues are featured on The Scarf My Father Wore such as The Crown (SK2), The Steelworks (SK6), The Three Tunnes (SK7) and Flute & Firkin (SK12). Support them this month by popping in for a few drinks and a bite to eat.