It has been an interesting month in the reserves, as the Chell Trophy campaign had its twists and turns, with wins away from home and losses at the Maple Tree Cars Stadium!
Our first fixture saw the return of Lewis Blanchett for the third time. Lewis played 90 minutes on the left hand side against Brightlingsea where we were humiliated by a 5-1 loss in our own back yard. Witham also humiliated us in our own back yard hitting us for six in a 6-1 defeat last Saturday. The great thing about this team is there is a great character and determination as two weeks after the Brightlingsea defeat the boys travelled to Stanway and came away with a 3-4 win (being 0-4 up with fourty minutes gone!) They then reacted to the 6-1 defeat by Witham to travel to North Road on a Wednesday night to win 1-2- Maybe we should just play away?
Despite sitting in third place in the Chell Trophy with the possibility of still qualifying for the quarter finals we will be happy to see the back of the competition and get into the thick of the league action. It has been a good challenge against higher league teams which has tested us. This is a great learning experience.
We were obviously upset to see Mo step back for a month but fully supportive of Kev and Ian during this period. It’s interesting to see the different philosophy’s different managers bring in. It is our job as a reserve team to support their philosophy and try to install it throughout the club.
I previously mentioned we had 22 players play in 4 competitive fixtures for the second string this total is now at 29 players in 8 games! So as you can see it’s difficult to ensure continuity in the match day squads! We have also seen more players push into the first team with Adie Cant, Joe Steel and Dan Morgan all representing the first team in this month.
We have two home fixtures this month as we welcome Stowmarket Town on the 8th November and Diss Town on 22nd November. Both of these games will kick off at 3.00.
Up the Wiv
Jason & Adam