Hennos notes 15.8.2009

Just to let you know that the reserves played a pre season friendly yesterday away at VCD, running out 2 -1 winners. Jay May played the first 45 minutes and Danny Barber played a full 90 minutes as did Sean Eferakho and Husain Isa. They will all train with the reserves on Monday as they look to build up their match fitness and I expect them to again feature in our first league game at home to Ashford next Saturday. The rest of the team featured three players from last years Sunday under 18’s, including Danny Crouch, and four from the Academy, including Karl Dent.

On the match front I felt we were unlucky to trail 1-0 and half time having played some very good passing football, but we definitely need to do shooting practise this week as we hit every shot high and wide after some great build up play. In the second half we pushed hard and forced an equaliser with Danny Crouch( who else ), scoring the winner late in the game.

The reserves has been structured this year to have a balance between youth and experienced first team squad players. Such is the size of the first team squad at this time, there will be a number of players who will not be in the chosen sixteen, and they will therefore play in the reserves to maintain their match fitness. It was decided that the Academy players would also have the opportunity to play more and I have brought in Simon Copley, who heads the Academy, to assist with training as he is a first class coach and he can push forward and recommend players he feels are ready to play. Also, thanks to Dave Phillips, we will now have a fully qualified medical assistant present at all matches this season, which was one of the things I pushed hard for to improve the set up further.

As you may be aware, the reserve midweek games at home have been changed to Wednesday nights for this coming season. This will allow us to play subs that either did not feature the night before for the first team or had limited time on the pitch, as well as the squad players who did not make the sixteen. Also, the hope is that more supporters will attend our matches as our midweek games will no longer clash as before.

I would just like to say a belated thank you to those of you who turned up to support our Floodlit final victory against Ashford in May, which was a fitting way for us to end the season and a just reward for all our hard work. I am delighted that players from my team who featured that night such as Adam Burchell, Husain Isa, Karl Dent, Sean Eferakho, Kieran Dingri and Danny Crouch were all give the opportunity to do the pre season with the first team, and I would like to think that none of them looked out of place at that level. I am especially pleased that Adam Burchell has done so well and shown everyone what a talented player he is. When he came to us in February, he was very low on confidence and was having a bad time with Gillingham, but we managed to get his chin up and enjoying his football again, and his confidence quickly returned as he started scoring goals and had a major impact in our successful run in. I think Adam has shown everyone what a talent he is and he will go on to play a major part in what we all hope will be a successful season for the first team.

Thank you for your continued support.

Henno