Ahead of the new season we caught up with first team manager Paul Dennis and first team coach Ryan Wheeler to discuss the summer and what lies ahead.
How do you feel pre-season has gone?
RW: Overall I’d say it’s been positive. On the pitch performances have been hit and miss. We’re not really focused on that, it starts with the league on Saturday. We started off playing opposition a lot higher position than we are, brought it down gradually. It’s just about performance and giving players minutes and fitness ahead of the season.
PD: I haven’t been about for much of pre-season, I’ve only seen one half and one match and to be honest still plenty to work on ahead of the upcoming season.
What are the biggest or most important lessons learnt during pre-season?
PD: Well I think football in general, as a coach, every game that you play you can learn something from, be it winning or losing. Often the best lessons are in defeat. I’ve only seen one and what I saw Saturday was enough lessons to write a book on. That said, there are positives to take out of it and [in training] we’ll just work on what we need to work on.
RW: We’ve had quite a few new players come in, we’ve learnt a lot about them in pre-season games. There’s been a bit of a turnover and the majority have responded well. The new boys coming in, we had no background on them so it’s nice to see what they can do.
What are the goals for the season?
PD: Promotion, without a doubt. We’ve kept the nucleus from last year, players we’ve lost are more senior players, but it’s down to the next level of players to step up and become senior players. They know the expectations, they know the standards we want, they know what we expect on the pitch, it’s just a case of carrying on as you were. The new boys coming in have to step up to be senior and the younger boys fill the positions of the boys that have left.
How important is it to have a positive start?
PD: Massive. Momentum in sport is massive. Whatever sport, if you’re winning it becomes a habit, so too losing becomes a habit. The problem we’ve got potentially is confidence. We had an ultra-tough pre-season playing [stronger] teams; we might as well have played Real Madrid and Barcelona at times for the difference in level, but what it does do is show the boys the standard where they need to be. Come Saturday all that goes out of the window; it’s a brand new start. The players will think we’re playing at our own level, teams we know. It’s business as usual.
RW: We’ve had a very tough pre-season but as Paul said we’re coming down to our level now. We had a good season last season under a different banner, we’re expecting to do the same damage we did last season.
What sort of challenge are you expecting from Hopkinstown and Nelson Cavs Reserves?
RW: Last year we had Hopkinstown first league game and they gave us a bit of surprise. We found ourselves 3-0 down after 30 minutes but managed to pull it back to 3-3 in the end. They are both tough opposition; they won’t be easy games. I know Hopkinstown didn’t have the best of seasons last year but on their day they can be a good team. Same with Nelson. Both teams are capable of pushing on, but we’re aiming to be strong and take six points from those two games.
PD: I always think in any league, in any competition in the world, you look at the first 3 games and the last 3 games they often throw up funny results. There’s no real form pattern, no teams settled. At the end when teams are fighting for promotion or against relegation it can often throw up a few surprise or shocking results. Every game is going to be tough, you don’t go out there thinking “you finished bottom last year, we finished second from top”; it doesn’t work like that. They’ll be there with their new kit, their new boots wanting to get a result on the first day of the season as everyone wants to and if you’re not thinking like that you shouldn’t be playing football.
