In terms of the squad, we've had a number of changes during the last few weeks. Unfortunately all 4 of our girls, Darcie, Mabel, Winter and Harriet, have chosen to move over to the newly formed U8 girls team with Garforth Villa. It's been brilliant having them all in the squad last season and they've all come on so much. In their first match for the new girls team, all 4 of them scored goals, with a total of 7 scored by the team. Although I'm sad to see them go I know they'll smash it and I'm sure you'll join me in wishing them all the best.

On the plus side we will hopefully continue to see Darcie at training at some point and Flic has agreed to carry on assisting with coaching too (thank you Flic!!!). Matt will unfortunately no longer be able to assist us with coaching duties, but again his contribution is very much appreciated and it will be a shame not to have him as part of our coaching team.

Final departure over the summer is Louie who has chosen to move to Colton where a number of his friends play. Understandably, he wants to play with his friends. As with the girls, his progress has been great and we'll miss him loads. He'll do a cracking job for Colton.

Although we have lost a number of players, we are very lucky to have a couple of new additions to the match squad. Both Stan and Jacob are now registered with the league and available for selection on match days beginning with this Saturday's opening match against Thorpe United. They've both been great in training and our friendly match last weekend so I'm excited to have them in the team. Coaching wise, Cal is still with us (thank you!) and was a great help getting the team organised at the match on Saturday and Ras has volunteered to join our coaching team which is brilliant. Hopeful I can still convince one or two more to take the plunge.

As for the league, we're split according to ability from the go this season, but there are a number of new teams which may move during the season once they've played and their results start rolling in. Some of those are in our part of the league so we might still get the odd shock. One such new team is Garforth Villa U8 Navy so we can resume our rivalry with Villa and hopefully win this time!!! We played Villa Blue start of last season and lost by a hefty margin as they are one of the top teams at Villa for our age group.

Fingers crossed for a win on Saturday. Go Go Garforth Rangers!