Pre-season dates announced

The league has now confirmed that the 2009/10 season will start on Saturday 15th August. With this in mind we aim to play friendlies on the following Saturdays:

Saturday 11th July
Saturday 18th July
Saturday 25th July
Saturday 1st August
Saturday 8th August

We will post further information as soon as we have any details about games being planned on these or any other dates

Last year we published some background to how our programme of pre-season friendlies is planned and we’d like to remind supporters that the following factors are considered when agreeing to games:

- Football considerations, i.e. will the match provide a good opportunity for the management team to assess our players?
- Charity requests for fundraising.
- Honouring obligations to teams that have given us specific help or have similar fan-based ownership.
- Attractiveness of the match for our fans.
- The willingness of the opponents to cover our expenses and share gate receipts
- Getting a mixture of local games alongside more distant travel, which may give an opportunity for teambuilding.
- Being invited! We have to play friendlies at away grounds; therefore we’re dependent on finding opponents who are prepared to host a game.

Sometimes pre-season seems a little crowded. We may often play two friendly games a week to ensure all squad members benefit from a complete programme of pre-season games. Although we may sometimes schedule extra practice games
to be played behind closed doors, we know people like to watch the team, so wherever possible friendly games will be open to supporters.