It has been quite the incredible rise for Tom Williams so far, going from your regular twitter user to tens of thousands following him and listening to his views on all things lower league.
After smashing through the 20,000 follower barrier on X, Tom spoke to Semi Professional, and he shared his thoughts on non league careers, what his plans are for next season and who he thinks you should be looking out for when the football season starts once more.
He told Semi-Pro: “I get job offers from clubs quite a lot actually but it’s not really great money which is understandable at that level. I have had offers to join different things such as paid opportunities to become a part of football websites.”
It can be a common misconception that a person like Tom does his content creation as a full time job, but this is not the case and really does make the levels of content he puts out even more remarkable.
“It’s difficult you know because a lot of people think that I sort of do this full time and obviously that isn’t feasible, I think a way to do it for myself would be to grow my tik tok as this is more financially rewarding however at the minute i’m still working towards this.”
We move on to look ahead to next season and Tom is always looking for ways to improve his content and has big aspirations.
“I really enjoyed commentating a game for Wealdstone last season and I will probably go back to Wealdstone again next season to commentate on a game or two. I guess for me I would love to get involved with something that is actually in studio. If I was to get an invite to something like that it would be really cool. I am also hoping to cover more Step 3 of non league because there is a lot of talent as well as interest in that level of football and it isn’t covered as much as it maybe should be.”
Tom relays the thoughts of us here at Semi Pro. We then moved on to the players involved in the divisions next season and what better place to start than National League South’s top marksman, Ollie Pearce.
“I saw a tweet recently that York were interested so that is more than likely a very credible link. I know Southend have been linked, which is sort of local enough to him, which I actually think is quite a big deal. In all fairness he scored that many goals that an EFL move wouldn’t be that outrageous.
“The thing is though it really all depends on whether he wants to go full time or not. If he doesn’t want to go full time then I don’t see much point in him moving. I think you actually see that a lot at that level. There is a lot of players that are actually really really good, but they don’t want to move because they have a job alongside which either they really enjoy or pays well.”
Finally, we look for some expert intel when it comes to maybe less known players in non league, so if you are having any early player of the year bets, maybe take this into account first.”
“Aldershot have just signed a player, Hayden Vaughan, I really like him, he has come from Bracknell. Very very good player and he has only just turned 18 but he is brilliant. I have seen a lot of people say he’s like Josh Stokes but I don’t see it personally. Yes it is similar in terms of where they have signed him from but not in terms of style.
“Another player I have watched a lot of and was watching clips of last night is Finley Wilkinson, he has signed from Step three. He is a really tall, strong, powerful Winger and i’m really looking forward to seeing what he does next season.”
So there you have it. Like we have seen there are some true gems of players that can be found in the non league pyramid, and some great content creators as well and Tom is one of the people at the forefront of this. Without these people there would be little coverage of the leagues and for that we must be grateful.
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