DEVIZES Town have taken less than a week to unveil former player Mark Godley as their new manager.

The club had been hit by the shock resignation of player-manager Dave Hopkins last week.

But they immediately sought a successor and this week chairman Phil Rossiter shook hands on an agreement with their new man.

Godley, who is in his late 30s, played for Devizes for a spell of around ten years during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After leaving the club took an 18-month sabbatical before joining Corsham Town as a player.

After three years at Corsham he was appointed their manager and then spent another three years in charge.

He resigned for family reasons and has since been out of the game but said he had been looking for a job in football for the start of the new season.

"I am obviously delighted to have been appointed manager of Devizes," he said.

"I spoke to Phil Rossiter almost immediately after Dave resigned and things went very quickly.

"Obviously I am pleased to be back managing club a I have played at which the case when I was at Corsham."

Godley confirmed he will be renewing his partnership with John Freegard who was also his assistant at Corsham.

Freegard is currently on the playing books at Melksham Town but the pair are not taking up their new roles at Nursteed Road until pre-season.

Godley added: "For now I am taking an unofficial role just watching games.

"Our aim next season will just be to stabilise the club on the playing side. We are under no pressure to win things straight away.

"We will work with nucleus of players there and try and get some consistency. We did that with Corsham three or four years ago.

"The timing has all worked out really well because I wanted to get back into management for next season and the club are happy with what we are trying to do."

Rossiter confirmed that current caretaker boss Sean Moffatt would stay in charge of team affairs until the end of the season.

"Sean always said he only wanted to be here for one season while the club got back on its feet," said Rossiter. "Mark and John will join officially in pre-season and take things from there.

"Things have moved more quickly than we anticipated but we wanted to get Mark on board.

"We would have kicked ourselves if we had been too slow and another team had snapped him up."

Rossiter added: "Sean was quite happy when we told him we had appointed Mark for the new season because it doesn't affect what he is doing until May.''