Eastleigh Football Club are delighted to announce that Vince Bartram has joined the Spitfires as a goalkeeper coach.
Vince made over 500 first-team league and cup appearances, playing in every division from the Premier League to the National League.
He played for managers including Brian Little, Graham Turner, Harry Redknapp, Tony Pulis, George Graham, and Arsene Wenger.
During his career, the former goalkeeper has worked with goalkeeping coaches such as Bob Wilson, Eric Steele, Jim Barron, and Peter Bonetti.
Born in Birmingham, Bartram’s first professional club was Wolverhampton Wanderers who signed him from a non-league team in 1985.
Bartram made his first team debut on 23 August 1986 in a 2–1 home defeat to Cambridge United, which marked the club’s first-ever game in the fourth tier of English football.
The goalkeeper then had loan spells with Blackpool, Cheltenham Town, and West Bromwich Albion, before finally leaving Molineux for AFC Bournemouth in July 1991. He went on to play 132 league games before on the south coast moving to Arsenal in 1994.
At Arsenal, he was David Seaman’s understudy and played just 11 league games in four seasons.
He spent 12 games on loan with Huddersfield Town to gain playing time in late 1997.
He signed for Gillingham on loan in March 1998 before the move was made permanent in the summer of 1998.
He firmly established himself as the first-choice goalkeeper at Priestfield Stadium and helped them to the Division Two play-off final in his first full season, where they lost out to Manchester City on penalties.
The following season saw them go one step further as they beat Wigan Athletic in the play-off final to reach the second tier for the first time in the club’s history.
In total, he made over 200 appearances for the Gills, before his retirement from the game in February 2004 due to a wrist injury.
The injury was caused by a collision with the opposition goalkeeper, Tony Warner, who had come upfield to try and score a goal from a last-minute corner.
Bartram held coaching roles at AFC Bournemouth and Portsmouth before he spent 12 and half years at the Southampton academy with responsibility for the development of goalkeepers.
The Spitfires manager, Lee Bradbury, commented: “Vince is very experienced in the football world and in the goalkeeping world. He has a lot of experience as a player and as a coach and has been at the top level with Southampton FC.”
“I’m absolutely delighted to get him on board and I’m looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table.”
