Hat-trick of league wins the target as 1874 come to town
After a slow start, our season is really starting to click into gear and for the first time in what seems a long time, we are more interested in what’s happening in the upper part of the league table than what’s going on in its lower reaches.
With many of our fellow Northern Premier League West teams in FA Cup action tomorrow, we could find ourselves in third place by 5pm on match day should we manage to overcome 1874 Northwich and both Avro and Stalybridge slip up in their games away to Chasetown and at home to Hednesford respectively. Whatever pans out, we’re in a good place.
As fans, it’s hard not to look too far ahead but Paul Moore and his team will be following the classic football mantra of ‘one game at a time’ as preparations continue for our next league match.
The 3-1 win at Hanley has left us ninth in the league and having picked up a few injuries in previous games this season, thankfully we came off the pitch with a fairly clean bill of health with Kyle Stubbs the only slight doubt for tomorrow with a hip niggle.
Joe Berks who played the last 10 mins at Hanley is that bit closer to a full return and may be considered. Danny Edwards,having been on the bench last Saturday and unavailable on Monday is another name to throw into the mix.
There’s an extremely healthy competition for places, as was shown by being able to call on our experienced and ever popular ‘keeper Joe Slinn for the last two matches. Slinny made a crucial save at 2-1 on Monday to illustrate the depth in our squad. Had Hanley equalised at that point, things could have been very different against our local rivals.
Our next opponents 1874 Northwich have had a tough start to the season and are still looking for their first win of the season. But as we know, things can very quickly change, so we will not be taking our opponents lightly, especially as we’ve failed to beat them in any of our last four league encounters.
Our now captain Tommy van der Laan salvaged a point for us this time last year in the home fixture against 1874 with a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw. We’ll hope to go one better this time.
This is a great time to support the team so do come out and get behind the boys as we push for the play-offs. Like I said earlier, us supporters are allowed to get ahead of ourselves!
Come on ‘Castle!