Cod Almighty | Diary

We did the Daniels

12 July 2017

Devon Diary writes: The quadruple is on! Last night, Town beat Stamford in round one of the Lincolnshire Senior Cup as we bid once again for bragging rights over our local-ish rivals. 

Our opponents in the quarter-finals will be Scunny and that's going to be played on Thursday at our place. The Iron have already said they'll be putting out a 'youthful' side as (a) they're also playing York tonight, and (b) the bulk of their squad appears to be in Austria. Slades has promised changes too as we have a game on Saturday against Barnsley. Fixture congestion already? It's like being back in the Conference. What next? A waterlogged pitch?

So, how did the rest of the first round fixtures go? Er.. there weren't any.

That's right, only Town and the Daniels (best nickname in football?) had to qualify for the quarter-finals, and I'm guessing that's because there were only nine teams entering this year. If we win tomorrow night, it sets up a juicy semi-final against Boston who played and won their QF against Lincoln last night. Calm down, it was United not City; our born again rivals down the A46 lurk in the other half of the draw. 

How did last night's game go? Probably not as smoothly as we would have hoped. Town needed a last-minute winner from new boy Dembele after falling behind, recovering with two goals from Sam Jones then conceding again. Russ will now be having a think about his trialists as he looks to cobble together a side for the upcoming campaign but reckons that Dembele is a real bright spark. Despite him not having played any meaningful, competitive football against League opposition, this has got a few fans worrying already that we'll lose him to a bigger club as we've been tight and only given him a one-year deal. Let's worry about that if it comes to pass, hey? 

Also worth noting was that we gave former Stevenage left-back Andrew Fox a game last night as Russ looks to fill his Danny Andrew-sized hole. I guess he'll get another run-out tomorrow night as that position becomes a priority. Neither Max Wright nor Josh Venney played last night, despite doing well at LB in our two previous games. Is that it for them? 

Looking at the rest of the squad, most have taken some part in our three games to date, but I'm hoping that both Ahkeem Rose and Harry Clifton recover from whatever is niggling their legs and get to show what they can do. It'd be great to see some of our younger players making that step up to the first team rather than the gaffer faxing agents to ask for "a left-footed lad" or "a striker, fairly tall".

On the subject of young players, and after the news that Deano Henderson will be off to Shrewsbury for a while, it looks like last season's young player of the year, Calum Dyson, will be heading to Plymouth for the season as his parent club Everton struggle with having far too many players on the books while still signing more. This also confirms that for the second year running, both our young and senior POTY winners won't be with us for the next season. The last time one stayed was young Craig Clay in 2015. Come on Woodses, sort it! 

Woah! Hold the front page! Town and Scunny have agreed a 2pm kick-off for tomorrow's tie. Meh.