Ahead of Saturday’s league match at Kettering (3:00 KO), manager Tim Flowers has looked at our opponents and preparations for the game. He starts by reflecting on our last two matches…
Back to league action, away at Kettering… last Saturday, we had our incredible turnaround at home to Sudbury – our most ardent fans probably wouldn’t have thought we’d find a way back into it at 3-1 behind and down to 10 men – and a massive credit goes to the players, who found it within themselves to go and get four goals in the final half an hour of the game.
It was an absolutely monumental effort and the atmosphere in the ground at the final whistle was almost like we’d gone top of the league – for any players that want to realise the sort of atmosphere you can have at our ground, when you get a good result and put everything into a performance, then that was a great example.
It was a terrific day for everybody, something that was definitely needed and although we’re on eggshells a bit in terms of our league position, we did jump up a few places. Some teams of got games in hand, and there’s a very fine line between us and fourth bottom, but we have to take the positives from that performance.
Then there was Redditch in the Worcestershire Senior Cup on Monday; in August, we were well beat there and we didn’t really lay a glove. I thought Monday was a real local derby – we were put under a lot of pressure in the first half, but just started to creep back into it just before half time, where we were 1-0 down.
There’s no doubt in my mind that we were the better team in the second half. We played some decent football and, to be fair, we found it difficult with their direct play up to Alex Cameron – basically, the ball got shelled down the channel to him, he landed on it in the final third and he was a real handful. We played decent stuff, but without really testing their goalkeeper. We had some really good deliveries from set plays and we’ve got to do better at getting first, second and third contacts when the ball goes to ground in attacking areas.
As per it being a local derby, there were some tackles and it was a proper dust-up. We acquitted ourselves fairly well and, in the future, we have to aspire to be winning those games, but hopefully that will come in due course and now we move on to Saturday.
Kettering are a team that are moving in the right direction under Liam McDonald – they’re up there in the form table, they have a good mixture of experience and youth, they’ve got good energy – Eddie Panter up front is really mobile, Preston Bitemo has got tremendous legs and energy, Blaine Rowe, Ismael Fatadjo and Alfie Lewis are very good in midfield, and Andi Thanoj and George Forsyth bring experience.
They’re a good side, and a well supported one. At the start of the season, everybody was suggesting they’d be definite play-off candidates. It’s going to be a really tough game – we accept that and acknowledge it.
I said to the players on Thursday night that we have no gimmes or free hits – we haven’t got that luxury because of the situtation we’re in. We’re going to have to try and take points off everybody, whether that’s top of the league or those down with us. We’ve got to try and take something from the game, whilst also recoginising it’ll be a tough job.
We’ve got to go and empty ourselves, stick to a shape and work hard when we’re out of possession to be able to achieve anything – that’s been the message to the players for a period of time.
We’ve been working hard at bringing one or two in – Kyle Belmonte has joined on a month’s loan from Worcester, and it’s always good to add fresh faces to the group.
