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 We embark on the 2011 season as Premier Champions, Premier Cup winners and Gledhill Cup winners, that is a lot to defend, but we will give it our best shot.
The pre-season was a mixed bag for us with barely any of our Saturday lads involved due to their commitments, we beat Thornton reserves, lost to a very good Bradford side and completed it with a good away win in Preston with a scratch team.
In saying that, come the season opener against Fleetwood Gym, we had 17 lads down all raring to go, and we put on a fine attacking display to annihilate them 8-0 and a fire a warning shot to everyone in the division. That plus Poulton’s defeat at Mythop, gave us a great first Sunday of the season.
The rumour coming back from Mythop is that a Poulton player got a red card for abusing the referee and accusing him of being a Quilligans fan. He needs to have a serious word with himself in my opinion. Firstly I know the referee well, he’s a decent one who we’ve had a run in or two with ourselves over the years and one that will take no abuse off mouthy players. So forget the fan bit straight away, secondly when you leak five goals in any game, you really don’t need to look beyond your own defending if you’re looking for a scapegoat, blaming the referee is really quite pathetic.
We have added a few decent recruits to the squad as usual. We picked up Mike Braebaum and Dave Stevenson from Eden, midfielder Mark Butler from Gardeners, Wembley winner Michael Clark from the Devvy along with Steve Betteridge, as well as a couple of other young lads you will hear more from this season.
Our only disappointment was signing striker Ben Waddington who shortly after signed for Northern Premier league side AFC Fylde, which of course stops his Sunday football. Luckily both Marc Beattie and Micky Evans are back after an injury curtailed season last year, and looked a right handful in the opener against the Gym scoring five between them. We also welcome back defender Sam Gorrie after a three year spell at Leeds Met University, which included representing British Universities in Europe, welcome back Sam.
We also have a new coach in FA accredited license holder Scott McNeil who replaces the departed Mark Faber , I’m looking forward to working with Scott who is passionate about the game like Mark was. He is also involved at Wrens which is good for us too as we have a number of players there.
Mark has decided to take up the role as manager of a new team Bathroom Solutions. He has recruited a few of his old team and added a sprinkling of good young players including a couple of our lads including Frendy, which will hopefully make our team functions a bit more sensible! I might even be able to put my drink down without it disappearing down his throat, and not have to ward off some raging bloke who’s missus has been offended! All the best to Mark and his team, I’m sure they’ll do well.
Finally this will be my 26th season in the Premier League as a manager and I’m often asked about retirement and who knows, this could be the year. We will see how things develop over the season, I have tried a couple of times before without success, most notably last season when Fabes decided after a couple of months that the hot seat was not for him and I had to resume at the helm.
I still get a buzz when we play well and win a big game, even after all these years, and the hardest thing would be leaving lads who still are hungry to win and play their heart out for the club and have signed for me. Not to mention my excellent back room staff who are equally responsible for the success of the team.
Enjoy the season, it promises to be another exciting one.
The Gaffer. |
