Red Badgers ready to go
Eastwood CFC joint-boss Daryll Thomas says the club are raring to go as the new UCL Premier North season starts this weekend.
The Red Badgers were defeated in the play-offs last season having led the way for much of the campaign.
The new season begins with a home match against Newark & Sherwood on Saturday and retention and recruitment has, as with all clubs, been the focus in recent weeks, but it hasn’t been the most enjoyable time for Thomas.
He said: “Bally and I haven’t really had a break and it’s been really challenging in a recruiting sense this time. We’ve had to spend a lot of time putting out fires to keep our own players as well as getting the right types of players in.
"The problem we’ve got this year is that you’ve got Basford and Matlock who have been relegated to step four, then the lateral moves of Carlton and Belper to the Midlands division at step four plus the rest of what is a huge cluster of East Midlands step four sides.
"So whilst we’re at step five, it’s meant a lot more competition for the better players who may now prefer to go that level higher rather than come to us.
"We’ve got some lads on decent money but we’ve had to rethink our strategy a little and have gone a bit younger.
"Those signed this summer, other than a couple with us previously, are all under-21 and three kids from last season who are 17 have signed contracts.
"Pre-season has therefore been really good as there’s a new lease of energy and enthusiasm, which with hindsight we probably needed last season. We have a strict plan now in terms of wages and will simply walk away if players want too much.”
Overall, Thomas was philosophical about how things have gone since he and Ball took the helm and is keen to put all of the experiences so far into making the next step.
He said: “We’ve only been here two-and-a-half years and are not the finished article as managers.
"We’ve added a couple of new faces into the management team who have been around non-league and are older figures that offer different opinions and voices.
"We were disappointed not to go up but there are a lot of worse things going on in the world. There’s always another game or season and we’re ready to go.”