CHAIRMAN Clive Robbins believes Tom Killick is the perfect person to mastermind Poole Town’s promotion push and insists: “We couldn’t ask for a better manager.”

Killick will today bid to lead Dolphins back to the Southern League Premier Division after a 20-year absence.

Victory in the Division One South & West play-off final against Gosport Borough at Tatnam (3pm) would see Poole regain their spot following two troubled decades.

Plagued by a series of ground-related problems during their recent history, Poole have enjoyed a revival under Killick, achieving three consecutive Wessex Premier titles and a place back in the Southern League.

Long-serving Dolphins chairman Robbins told the Daily Echo: “He is a good tactician, he lives and breathes football and he has got a great footballing brain.

“The players he has brought in have not only been better players every year but the players that have played with them and the players we have kept in the squad have matured and become better as a result of Tom’s managerial skills, in my opinion.

“I have personally never fallen out with Tom. We sometimes have to restrain him with his attitude to officialdom and, sometimes, he does like to discuss decisions with the referee.

“But we couldn’t ask for a better manager. He is, without doubt, the best manager we have had. I expect Chris (Reeves, vice-chairman) would probably agree.

“Certainly in my time, he has been the best manager we have had. In the 21 years I have been chairman, I have probably only had six or seven.

“We are not a club that wants to change managers because they are not particularly successful at any given time but that hasn’t ever reared its head with Tom because we have had success.”

Robbins added: “I think Tom could manage at a higher level.

“He is comfortable where he is and he lives and works locally. There is a limit to how much travelling a man can be expected to do for a job for which he doesn’t get paid a king’s ransom.

“But I think if he wasn’t so happy at Poole and hadn’t had such success at Poole, he would have been seriously looked at by bigger clubs.

“I am quite sure there are teams along the south coast that have got a big attraction from the point of view they are bigger clubs playing in higher divisions. But I don’t think they would get a better manager – certainly not a manager who would spend as much time as Tom does.”