ROBIN
THE GLEBE
FALCUS
GOOD EVENING AND WELCOME TO THE FIRST MORTGAGE GLEBE FOR TONIGHT’S EMIRATES FA CUP PRELIMINARY ROUND MATCH WITH THORNABY
F
irstly, I’d like to start this column off by offering a warm welcome to the players, management and supporters of Thornaby and wish them a safe travel back after this match. We’ve got a decent squad together now and we still have one or two missing. We will still have about 18 players to choose from for tonight’s game. We trust the squad and we’ll be using it. We feel as if we have a very competitive team for tonight and we feel as if we are going to need it as we put a proper shift in the last time we played Thornaby, just nine days ago. We had to put a fully committed performance in to beat them. To be honest, we’re expecting exactly the same tonight. We should be full of confidence going in to this match with Thornaby. The Stockton game, we’ve chopped and changed and we’ve managed to get fresh legs for tonight’s match. The RCA game will give us a lot of confidence because the performance was good. We were committed and, in a lot of these Northern League games, you’ve got to out-battle the other team. I was always confident that we were going to score a goal, but having the luxury of having Carl Finnigan and young Scott Robson on the bench. Bringing them on changed the game for us and, luckily, we got the right result. Scott has been great, he’s exactly what we’ve wanted. This will give us confidence going into this FA Cup game, but we’re taking nothing for granted at all, we will be drilling it into the players that it is in an important game for us and them. Apart from the first game of the season, WHICKHAMFC
WHICKHAM FC TV
Thornaby have done really well making the step up to the First Division. We’re under no illusion, this is going to be a very hard game for us, but it also will be for them. We’ve got to have massive confidence at home and we need to make The First Mortgage Glebe a place where teams don’t like coming to and that starts with winning the game tonight. Having played them only last week, it’s probably a bit of an advantage because I don’t think they’ve got too much more to come in. I could be wrong, but I’ve looked at their team sheets. I think we’re a work in progress and we’re only going to get better and better as the season goes on, as long as we can keep everybody fit. We’re a new side ourselves. We brought a few new players in during the summer and we’re only going to get stronger. Hopefully it’s an advantage that we know that we’re going to get better and better. It’s an advantage that we’re playing at home, but, having said that, we played Stockton just 48 hours ago. Will we have heavy legs? Hopefully not as we’ll be using the squad to our advantage in both games, with fresh legs coming into the team. We’ve got some really fit lads in the team and we’ve got some that don’t like that artificial surface. Playing them Wednesday and then tonight is asking for trouble, so we’ll be sensible about it. Enjoy the game!
ROBIN
EMIRATES FA CUP - PRELIMINARY ROUND 5