Ahead of our final pre-season match tomorrow, at home to Hereford, manager Tim Flowers has looked at the game and reviewed our pre-season campaign to date…
We conclude our pre-season schedule with an extremely stiff test at home to National League North Hereford. Manager Aaron Downes has clearly transformed them in the summer – there’s been quite a few changes in playing personnel, similar to ourselves, and a style change as well; they look to be full of energy, high pressing and a team who won’t allow you to get after you if you try to do so.
They’ll clearly be a force in the league above ours – we welcome them, thank them for giving us the fixture and wish them well with their season.
It concludes our seven match pre-season programme; the previous six games have gone well for us – slowly, we’ve seemed to develop and improve, which will happen as the players play and train together.
It’s a new group as everybody knows and we’ve navigated the first few games well – staying injury free, scoring 24 goals and only conceding three. Those sort of things are good habits to get into. Winning the games is a good habit but, in the end, it means nothing going into the season opener against Needham – other than it gives the lads confidence early in the campaign.
We’ve still got a lot of work to do in terms of shaping the team – its structure and DNA. Some of the DNA in terms of what the boys are like – their training and mentality approaching games and during games – is first class. There’s a lot of winners and leaders in there and that’s going to bode well for the future. The more we stick together and play together, the better we’ll get.
I hope everybody enjoys the game tomorrow – we’ve then got a week before the real stuff starts, where it’s time to cut free from looking after ourselves and making sure we get to the start of the season and really go for it – I’m delighted with how they’ve conducted themselves so far.
