THE CHAIRMAN

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Addison Road for our match with Milton Keynes Irish FC. I would like to extend a special welcome to all those connected with our visitors today.

As I write this, the weather continues to hamper the re-start of the season following the Christmas break and both sides have only played once since the turn of the year. For the Easington boys, training has been severely affected for nearly two months now. I noticed comments from Andy Wing, the Banbury United manager, bemoaning the lack of sports facilities in the Banbury area for training and matches. This is something Cherwell District Council really need to get to grips with as Climate Change is here to stay. It is increasingly common to have waterlogged pitches at Sports. However, the flip flopping between torrential rain and then frost is a new challenge in recent years. We continue to push for improvements but I continue to be frustrated with these talks, especially at a time when the Football Foundation is desperate to invest into improvements in the local area.

I am not sure what type of game to expect, as the pitch is heavy and will almost certainly cut up. After a bright start against our opposition at the beginning of the season, Milton Keynes Irish were comfortable winners on the day. At this stage of the season the table doesn’t lie and so I am expecting a tough game for our lads. With both sides keen to get the season back underway I hope we get a fully committed performance from Easington and that we take our chances. It will be important to the first points on the board in 2023

I hope you have an enjoyable afternoon with us at Addison Road and have a safe journey home!

Best wishes

Richard Meadows Chairman

First things first – A very belated Happy New Year!! Hope all connected with the club had a nice break! For me personally it was nice to take a break away from football, since taking over in June it has been not stop all the way through to Dec, our first friendly game was July 02nd away at Banbury! As a coaching team we have put everything into it, so It was nice to spend time with the family and not constantly bore them about football talk (well I tried not to!) – It was also a much needed break for some of the players who have young families so it has been nice for them to spend time with them & recharge the batteries.

What we didn’t predict was just how long we would go without a game due to the very cold & wet weather and in the end it has been really frustrating. When you are not playing games you want to keep the squad match fit and ticking over, this has almost been impossible with the extreme lack of facilities around Banbury. For the size of the town I find it embarrassing that there is no 3/4G facility available. It has been a problem for a number of years yet nothing has been done.

We finally managed to a get game in last sat against a very strong Coventry Utd, on a really difficult 3G pitch I thought we manged the first 60 mins very well and frustrated the home side by slowing the game down. It took a brilliant goal to break us down and finally beat the in form Doyle. From then onwards we were second best, the lads gave everything but in the end we looked tired and were well beaten. Coventry will not lose many games at home, they were well drilled and played the pitch to perfection. With games coming thick & fast we move on quickly to MK Irish in what will be another tough game, it was a very close game at their place where we had so many early chances that we didn’t take and in the end came away empty handed. We have trained well this week and if we can repeat the performance we showed at our last home game it will be another exciting game!

As we approach the second half of the season it is key that we build on what we have already achieved & learn from our mistakes, a big part of that will be to keep bringing the youth players through the system which has been very exciting for the club with Ollie Rose & Jack Herbert coming through and impressing, I will be spending much of the season watching the youth games on a Sat/Sun looking for potential, there are so many good players amongst our very exciting youth section. We will also look to bring in players that will make us stronger as we already have. Liam Howards has been a great signing and has improved by the game as his fitness & confidence grows, also Kyle Wynne is now back in training and is getting sharper. There are also a couple of other potential signings we are looking at & very close to sealing, competition for places is getting stronger and we are all ready for remainder of the season!

Finally a massive thanks for all your support so far this season, hopefully you will be looking forward to get back watching the lads! Get behind us as normal and lets bag another 3 points!

Enjoy the game, Sharm