We are on the road for the fourth consecutive game today as we travel down to Worcestershire to take on Stourbridge, hoping to make it seven consecutive away league wins, a run that started back in the middle of November on the 3G pitch at Sutton Coldfield.
Stourbridge were one of the pre-season favourites to win the league, but following a decent start they hit a bit of a bad patch, before recovering well during the last month.
They are currently 11th in the table, but with games in hand, I fully expect them to be pushing for a play-off place from now on & wouldn’t be surprised to see Gary Hackett’s side in the top five come the last Saturday in April.
The game may well be a very tight affair with two very good defences that between them have conceded just 48 goals in 52 league games played by the two sides.
Stourbridge are a direct and physical side but we have shown that we are more than capable of dealing with that during the season.
In Luke Benbow and Kaiman Anderson, who is on loan from Southport, they have two very dangerous forwards and like us, they are a strong all round team.
Tom Hannigan will not be involved today. He has seen a specialist to assess his thigh injury and both Tommy Uda and Ryan Murray have been doing a lot of strength conditioning work with him to try to correct a muscular imbalance.
James Jones came in at Stafford last week & had a very good game and we are very fortunate to have three high quality centre backs at the club in James, Tom and Ben Harrison.
We have played on some terrible pitches recently, but the playing surface at the War Memorial Athletic Ground is usually very good, therefore I am hoping that the playing conditions suit our passing game today.
It’s a longish trip being the best part of a hundred miles but I’m sure that we will once again have very good travelling support, as we did in the 2-0 win at Stafford last week, when once again, the numbers and vocal support was fantastic and the singers certainly seemed to enjoy gaining revenge on Stafford for that opening day defeat in August.
