Ahead of Saturday’s league match at Stratford (3:00 KO), manager Tim Flowers has looked at the opposition and the support we’ll have. He starts by reflecting on last weekend’s victory…
For the St Ives game, there was obviously a huge amount of pressure for both teams – it was a bit of a horrible day for all concerned and I didn’t enjoy watching the game – I only enjoyed the result. I didn’t enjoy the fraughtness that went with it but that scenario, from when we last played them earlier in the season to now, has been brought on by ourselves. There’s been a lot of hard work gone into the recent weeks – some of the lads have had to go because they’re probably not the right personalities in the dressing room and haven’t been giving their all. We’ve had to do that and there is now a huge sense of team spirit and I think that probably brought us through a little bit last Saturday, as Ives are decent.
I thought the boys were excellent last weekend and worked as hard as they possibly could – I’ve got the GPS stats from the game – the club had those vests for so long and weren’t using them – we are now and I know how far they’re running. They worked hard – doing 107km between those who got on the pitch. It was a good effort – both centre forwards scored and Shay Willock made an impact when he came on.
The boys have been terrific. The standard of training has been excellent – we have got a thin squad, but we’ll have a right go tomorrow at Stratford.
They’re in tremendous form – I’ve seen all the stats on the match preview and I’ve watched their last two games. They’re good – they’ve got good players, with Kyle Lafferty on double figures for the season, Lewis Ison scoring goals and Owen James having a good season. They’ve have plenty of pace up front, with four strikers who sit behind the ball and play on the counter attack when you’re loose in possession – they can hurt you badly when they do that. At set pieces, they’re big and they have a long throw with Ison and good crosses from Fin Brennan.
They’re in a good place at the minute, with good results – we’re aware of it, respect it and know we’re up against it – but Bromsgrove Sporting is a big football club and we’ve got represent the club and the town with everything we’ve got. And we’ll do that.
We all know the connotations of this weekend’s matches and whether it goes into next weekend or not. My view is it could well do, but it’s in our hands and that’s a positive.
I’d desperately love this weekend to be the one makes the difference for us, and we can start planning for next season, but football never delivers like that – it can stab you in the heart and I’m absolutely aware of what it takes this Saturday, and next if needed. I’m planning going forward and once we know where we are, I can plan with a little more authority.
We’re bang up for this game, and the opposition, given how good we know they are and the form they’re in – if we’re anywhere near not right, we will get taken apart.
I know there’s going to be big support for us there tomorrow – probably north of 100, with the bus that’s coming, plus people who will make their own way of course. At St Ives, the fans were there in force and, as I’ve said before, this is a proper football club and if we were doing anywhere any good, we’d be bringing 500 to this game it would be segregated!
That’s what I’m looking forward to in the future – if I’m lucky enough to be in charge of the team that control that kind of support – and give them the kind of enjoyment that I know they crave.
