Skip to main content

The most wonderful time of the year

 Forget Christmas. Football pre-season is really the most wonderful time of the year!

Give it a couple of months and millions of football fans up-and-down the country will be leaving grounds and stadiums feeling well and truly deflated. Their weekends utterly ruined by their team’s unfathomable failure to beat the division’s whipping boys or staggering ability to somehow turn a comfortable 2-0 half-time lead into a baffling 3-2 full-time defeat. We’ve all been there. Some of us more often than we’d like to have been!

But in pre-season none of the above matters. At this time of the year, the only emotion for most fans is one of prevailing optimism (unless you happen to support Everton or Manchester United, that is).

The playing field is level. Everyone (well, in theory everyone) has the same number of points. You’re still in all the cup competitions you’ve entered. The deadwood has been got rid of (let’s be honest, even if said deadwood happened to be your team’s star player last year, this is how we now think of them). Exciting new signings haven been made. The youth prospects are a year more experienced. The season is a blank canvas just waiting for your team to paint a picture of triumph onto it. 

Everything is up for grabs!

In recent years, pre-seasons at non-league level have changed somewhat. Especially for clubs playing in Steps 3-6 of the non-league pyramid.

The advent of social media means that the majority of clubs now announce new player signings (or re-signings) in a way they never used to. My Twitter feed is simply clogged up by local clubs announcing their new arrivals and letting all and sundry know who they’ve managed to keep hold of (somewhat conveniently omitting to mention those players who have left for pastures new).

I’ll be honest, when this trend first started materialising a few years ago, I – along with quite a few other people, I suspect – was a bit dubious about it. ‘It’s all a bit much, isn’t it’, I’d sneer into my phone. ‘Who do they think they are?’

How times change. Now I love it.

The more games you watch at a certain level, the more you get to know the players – not just at your club, but others as well. Therefore, not only is announcing signings a great way for clubs to build anticipation for the season ahead, it also allows regular match goers the opportunity to assess what other teams you need to be wary of this season. Or, to put it more accurately, what teams are splashing the cash this season.

Scrolling through Twitter at this time of the year is certainly entertaining.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who sees a team proudly announcing the arrival of a new player (insert random name here) who can’t “wait to get going”. A player that everyone knows full well will be heading to another club the second an extra fiver becomes available. I’ve seen at least four such players announced by sides in the SCFL so far already this pre-season. I’m sure there will be others to follow.

As far as Newhaven are concerned, pre-season seems to be progressing well.

The majority of last year’s regular playing squad have already re-signed (I’m sure – and hope – that there will be a few more to follow in the coming days; if Ian Robinson isn’t announced soon then it’s only a matter of time before my youngest starts rioting!) while a number of new signings have made their way to Fort Road. Welcome to the club Ryan Storrie, Tom Underwood, Alex Plummer, Marcin Ruda and Harry Reed.  





The other great thing about this time of year is that, after a month or two of football-free Saturdays, pre-season friendlies are getting underway.

Great news! No more Saturday afternoons spent listening to either the wife urging me to a) do the hoovering; b) mow the lawn; or c) both of the aforementioned, or the eldest shouting a load of incomprehensible claptrap at whatever PS4 game he happens to be playing.

Unfortunately, I missed this past Saturday’s opening outing at Lancing, due to the early kick-off time of 13:00 – the time I finish coaching in Brighton – so I’m unable to give any insight into the game itself.

However, the result was hugely positive. A 3-2 win for the Dockers against higher-league opposition should prove to be a confidence booster. What’s more, the goals being scored by Marley Ambler (youth prospect with an extra year’s experience), Lee Robinson (of course) and Tom Underwood (exciting new signing) all further the cause for optimism for the season ahead.

This Saturday, all being well, I will be off to Arundel for the second of six away pre-season friendlies (Fort Road being out of use this summer while the new 3G pitch is laid). This will be my first chance to see how the youth prospects with an extra year’s experience and the exciting new signings meld with the existing first-team players. I can’t wait.

Even better, with it being pre-season, you can always underplay the importance of any results that happen to go against you. After all, it’s all about getting minutes into the player’s legs and getting the squad used to playing with one another. Right? There’s nothing to worry about. 

Win, though, and suddenly dreams of a successful coming season are magnified ten-fold

Like I said earlier, pre-season. It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Dockers remaining pre-season schedule:

9th July - Arundel (A) 14:00 kick-off

12th July: Mile Oak (A) 19:45 kick-off

16th July: Seaford Town (A) 14:00 kick-off

19th July: Whitehawk (A) 19:45 kick-off

13rd July: Rusthall (A) 15:00 kick-off

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

508 and out for legendary duo

Newhaven 2 Petersfield Town 1, SCFL Premier Division match #22 Nothing lasts for ever. All good things must come to an end.... Use whatever cliché you want, they are all, unfortunately, true. As I’m sure every man and his dog already knows, after more than ten years and 508 games, Saturday's home match against Petersfield Town marked the final time Andy Cook and Sean Breach will be in charge of the Dockers men’s team (although Cooky continues in his role as the women’s team manager). The term legend is bandied about far too often these days. But there can be little doubt that both Breachy and Cooky are, and will forever be, club legends. Their role in transforming Newhaven from a team in the doldrums to one of the most consistent and best-supported teams in the county league cannot be ignored. And as could be witnessed by the many messages that came pouring in via our Twitter feeds in the wake of their resignation announcement (from those outside the club as well as within)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nine in nine has us dreaming

Newhaven 3 Roffey 1, SCFL Premier Division match #36 Football. It’s a funny old game! Had you told anyone following our Boxing Day defeat against local rivals Peacehaven that there would be anything riding on the return fixture, then you would almost certainly have found yourself certified. Yet, here we are, just under four months on, with a match as potentially important as any Haven Derby in recent history. The winners will go into the last day of the season with at least a mathematical chance of still reaching the play-offs. For the losers, though, any such dreams can probably be extinguished. That the Dockers find themselves in such a position is thanks solely to a frankly astonishing run of nine-straight victories. A run that continued on Saturday with victory over another play-off chasing side, Roffey. At one point, Roffey had looked odds-on for a play-off spot. However, a downturn in form which had brought just one win in seven games prior to Saturday has seen their ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Three in three for slowly improving Dockers

Saltdean United 1 Newhaven 2, SCFL Premier Division match #24 Newhaven made the short trip to Saltdean last night, aiming to make it three league wins from as many games in 2025. On paper, the Dockers should have been more than confident of claiming three more points against a Saltdean side who are struggling near the foot of the table. However, as regular watchers of Newhaven this season will be only too aware, the only guarantee with the Dockers at the moment is that there are no guarantees. See Little Common at home for proof of that. And with former Newhaven coaching stalwart Kieran Ridley at the Saltdean helm, you can always be sure that the Tigers will be extra fired-up for this encounter. On a bitterly cold evening, and with the match being played on a surface that you couldn’t exactly describe as a carpet (understatement alert), few of the spectators present would have been expecting to watch a footballing classic.   And they didn’t. This most certainly was not ...
Post a Comment
Read more