Former Forest Green Rovers striker Callum Morton “enjoyed” his time in Gloucestershire despite it being a “difficult period” in his career.
The 26-year-old spent half a season at Rovers whilst on loan from Salford City in which he scored four goals in all competitions in 15 games which included a brace against Crawley Town.
David Horseman was the manager for the majority of the time that Morton was at the club as the side struggled on their return to League Two after relegation from League One in 22/23.
Embed from Getty Images“It was good, it wasn’t a bad set up there,” Morton said. “They obviously trained away from the area in Chippenham, and the club was sort of in a transitional period after just getting relegated from League One.
“The manager that was there at the time [Horseman] I enjoyed playing under him and I was a bit unfortunate in terms of the way the squad was set up and the way the manager wanted to play so it was a bit of a difficult period in that sense”
The club decided to change manager in December with Horseman replaced by former Watford striker and FGR player, at the time, Troy Deeney in what remains his only managerial role to date.
It was an extremely controversial time for Rovers, which led to a lot of media attention, after comments that he would “rather watch Antiques Roadshow” and that Morton’s teammate Dabo was “awful”.
“I was only there for four or five games under him before I went back to Salford, but it was a bit of a different experience but yeah I didn’t have much time working with him.”
The now Worthing striker had his loan cut short in January 2024 after Salford City decided that they wanted him to re strengthen their own striker department.
Morton would return to Greater Manchester where he struggled for game time and only made 13 appearances for the rest of the season in which he failed to score.
“The decision was taken out of my hands, I was put in a position where Forest Green wanted a different profile, in terms of I was playing on the wing, and they wanted a winger, so they made that decision.
“Then obviously went back to Salford, which I enjoyed being there socially with the lads but it wasn’t ideal in terms of minutes and playing as I didn’t really get an opportunity in back-to-back games at Salford to start and they were in a similar situation struggling as well but it was sort of just one of those things that you have to go with.”
Forest Green became the world’s first Vegan football club in 2017 as part of the club’s huge focus on the environment.
Obviously for new players joining the club it is something which is hard to adapt to and Morton found that especially.
“It was different, the food was hit and miss a lot of the time. It was the first experience for me trying Vegan food some of it was surprisingly nice and some of it not so much but yeah it was a bit of a weird experience.”
