JAMIE COLEMAN

THE MANAGER

Good afternoon and a very warm welcome to Foxcotte Park to all our supporters for today’s game against our visitor’s Ringwood Town.

I’d like to welcome the Ringwood management team, their staff, players and all officials and supporters who have made the journey to Andover this afternoon. Ringwood are a club, who have struggled over the past few seasons battling at the wrong end of the League One table. This season they made a terrific start by winning their opening three matches and have provided stern opposition against Andover Town, Newport IOW and ourselves in the reverse fixture back in October last year.

The Town have always been a tough opposition for us, and I expect nothing different this afternoon. We will need to be at our very best to get a positive result.

We come into the game having continued our impressive unbeaten run in the league into the new year with victory over league leaders New Milton Town.

I thought the game with the Linnets was a good advert for the Wessex League. Both sides went for it in difficult conditions. I’m not being biased when I say my team were magnificent, and so were you in the stands. We showed great character to weather the New Milton attacks in the first half and scored a great goal from a Mikey Davis corner that beat the keeper and gave Scott Hassell the easiest of headers to give us the lead.

In the second half, we showed the attacking prowess we have as we grew stronger and created a few opportunities to double our lead but were denied by resolute defending by our hosts.

Just when it looked as though we would hold on to a 1-0 win, Cooky broke through to make certain of the points and put us level with New Milton with 5 games in hand.

This has put us in a strong position moving into January, with so many matches to play this month, the whole squad will be needed if we are to maintain our levels of performance.

Enjoy the game.

THIS HAS PUT US IN A STRONG POSITION MOVING INTO JANUARY, WITH SO MANY MATCHES TO PLAY THIS MONTH, THE WHOLE SQUAD WILL BE NEEDED IF WE ARE TO MAINTAIN OUR LEVELS OF PERFORMANCE.