Time to get the job done
We’ve already acknowledged the fact that Saturday wasn’t our greatest performance and the best thing you can say is that we have an immediate opportunity to put that right tomorrow night under the lights at Buckmaster Avenue.
And what a great opportunity it is – a home replay with the reward of a first qualifying round tie at home to come in the next round.
But first we need to get passed a Westfields side from the Hellenic Premier Division, which came within moments of putting us out the cup on Saturday, before Tom Jones came off the bench to score his third goal in the competition already this season and keep our hopes alive.
Scoring late goals is becoming a habit and that can never be a bad thing. Successive Saturdays have seen us salvage a late point and a replay respectively in the league and cup. Having said that, neither is it something we want to rely on.
Our last cup replay a fortnight ago, saw us put in a terrific performance in a 3-2 win over Evesham and it’s more of that that we want to see to hopefully secure our passage into the next round. So far, that remains our only win in five this season but it’s definitely a glass half full position at the moment, as a lot of the football we’ve played has merited far more than that solitary win.
Our captain Tommy van der Laan is very much championing the positive approach and looking forward to tomorrow night’s replay.
“We weren’t quite on it on Saturday, and I spoke about that after the game, so there’s no need to dwell on that again.Tomorrow is another opportunity and I know that all the boys will be extremely motivated to make the next round.
“We’re still unbeaten which shows what a resilient team we are. There were the two games where we’ve scored very late and then there was the Stafford game where we did brilliantly to keep playing our football after falling 2-0 down.
“There’s so much potential in this team but we do need to get our noses in front in games now and not be relying too muchon late goals. When it clicks, we’re going to be a decent side and I’m confident that it will click tomorrow night!”
In terms of team news for tomorrow, having come off the bench to score the equaliser on Saturday, Tom Jones will be pressing for a starting place with any other changes likely to be as a result of niggles from the weekend.
We blooded in another debutant at the weekend in Carlos dos Santos – who came on as a replacement for Jack Sherratt - showing that we are starting to strengthen the squad. We’ll need everyone to be on their mettle with the reward of a home draw against Long Eaton United in the first qualifying round at stake tomorrow.
Come on ‘Castle!