It is apparent that our injury woes seem set to continue with no less than 8 players on the treatment table in that first week back. This is coupled with the news that Terry Oconnor’s knee and Andy Cook’s broken leg will join Rob Ursell on the medium to long term injury list. This is bad luck particularly on Andy and Tel as they had both had very good games against Taunton last week and Andy had forced his way into the starting 11. We wish both a speedy recovery, both work so hard and are excellent members of the squad.

Our game at Bracknell also robbed us of Michael Chennells services early with an ankle injury. More of that game in a second… I have moved quickly to replace Andy Cook in midfield with the one month Loan signing of Kelvin Mcintosh from Hampton and Richmond. Kelvin is a quality midfield dynamo with an all action style that will suit us well and compliment the other players in the side. I am delighted to have him here.

I am open to further strengthening of the squad in any areas as there are a number of players who are interested in joining us. Whilst I am happy with the core of the squad and I am working within my budget, I am always interested in improvement in any area.

On a sad note, I have to report that Craig Vargas has decided to leave the club and return to Hendon’s relegation battle. This is very disappointing as Craig made such a great contribution whilst he was here on and off the field. What I do know is that he was put under enormous pressure by Hendon to sign for them over a prolonged period of time and unfortunately he came to me last week out of the blue with his mind made up. It may well be that Craig returns to us in the future some day and we would welcome him back to the family with open arms.

Our return to league action has seen two good performances against Marlow and Taunton and one defensively poor 10 man performance away at Bracknell when nothing went right.

Now is not the time to panic in any way as we can still achieve our objectives with the same hard work, quality and thought. For those interested in league tables in February, it still has a very distorted look to it and hopefully we will be going into March in a strong position to attack the last quarter of the season.

The players and I are desperate for success this year and we all feel another long run of wins as we had before the bad weather, is just around the corner.