Dorking Wandering
The Dorking Wanderers FC Fans Forum
Rather than doing an individual match thread for each pre-season game, it is probably better to just do one big one for all of them.
We start with step 3 Poole Town away this Saturday at 1pm who finished 13th last season in the Southern Premier League. A side that included ex-Wanderer Wes Fogden although he has left the club in the Summer.
Marc's update last week suggested that quite a few players will miss the first couple of games of pre-season with McShane being the long term injury. Bowerman, Murphy, Gallagher, Briggs, Pybus and Francomb all sound like doubts for this game.
Obviously tough to pick a line-up for a Friendly but I would say our strongest side (3-5-2) with the players available is probably:
Foulkes
Camp Craig Norville-Williams
Muitt Kuhl J.Taylor B.Taylor
Carter
Prior Rutherford
Subs: Fuller, Kennedy, Rabbetts, McManus, Brown, Gale, Moore
Poole 2-4 Dorking (Kuhl, Prior, Rutherford, J.Taylor)
Thought game was fairly even today. First I've seen Camp and Foulkes and they both looked good. Murphy could have done better with a couple of chances he had. Based on that performance, we are way off challenging for title. Good possession, but need to put our chances away. Rushall are expected to be fighting to avoid relegation according to their fans and they matched us in most areas.
Marc's post match is very accurate for an insight in to the game today. We dominated for the first 50-60 mins and should have been 3-0 up at half time after Murphy hit the bar from 5 yards out and then Prior missed a couple of close range chances as well.
Once the subs started happening, the game became very fragmented with lots of stoppages and players who were clearly not up to full sharpness (McManus, Kuhl, Briggs, Prior, Fuller, etc). Rushall started to get a bit of a foothold in the game as a result and grabbed a relatively scrappy goal on the break with their only shot of the match (bar one chance blazed miles over late on).
Marc is very correct in saying that the left hand side has been a real problem these last few games, especially with Norville-Williams now injured. Bobby-Joe looks fairly off it in pre-season and Bowerman remains injured so we're really lacking options on that side. Hopefully we learn from last season and look at some loan options.
I thought Bobby Joe Taylor caused problems when he came on like he normally does.
Thought Marc was not as positive in his interview as has been. Think he has realised this season will be tougher than he thought.
@crawleysth A couple of decent runs but not much end product, same as against Farnham.
Wouldn't surprise me if we end up signing a left sided player in these next few weeks (similar to Blair last season). With Norville-Williams, Bowerman and Kennedy (presumably) injured and Rabbetts and Gale leaving, we'll end up having to play the likes of Fuller, Francomb, McManus, etc there again. Let's see if we've learned our lesson on that from last season...
Wasn't at the game on Saturday, but does anyone know how long Norville-Williams is expected to be out for? He has looked very good so far I think, so a real blow if he is out for a while. Sounds like we will need to manage our expectations for a while.
