Yesterday’s team for an hour had ten players aged 24 and under, of which five were aged 20 and under. The squad had twelve of the 17 aged 24 or under and fourteen of the 17 are new to step 4 this season. I say this not as an excuse, as I have nothing to excuse, but to just put a little bit of context and understanding around our journey compared to a team like Corby Town who, nine seasons ago, were step 2 in the National Conference North when we were step 8 in the West Midlands Regional League playing in Division Two.

There’s very little point in me saying that I’m only interested in positive performances and not results then being upset following yesterday’s game, for large swathes of the game we were excellent and set new levels of what we can achieve. We learned more yesterday from a positive perspective than in any game in the last ten years, in my opinion.

I’m not sure if only one person reads these words or three hundred but anyone who reads my words regularly knows the trust and pride I have in my team, that’s not based on just anything, it’s based on true respect for a bunch of boys and girls on and off the pitch who are punching so high in performance for their weight it’s ridiculous, and yesterday if you remove the emotion, which I accept is difficult in football, it was a fantastic day for our club.

There are some footballing reasons why Corby eventually got to us yesterday, but there’s not one excuse from us - those close enough to us know the difficulties we had yesterday but it would be an insult to my players to find excuses, I won’t do that, I know it sounds churlish to mention resources and trust me I don’t care one bit what other teams have, but if you know you know and I couldn’t be prouder.

Huge respect to Corby Town, their gaffer and management who were top draw from minute one, proving yet again you don’t need to be a wally to be successful, their players, who did everything they needed to do to win both good and bad, but again lessons for us and lastly their man of the match - the Ali G in the Corby crowd- who were unbelievable on the day - top job Corby.

Special mentions for Sam Smith who was outstanding deputising for Poddy (Ben Podmore), Bish (Aaron Bishop) who was top draw covering for Alex, Joel and Chezer (Harry Chesterton) who were class as usual, Ryan and Lewis who had fantastically strong performances in midfield and Rivel who continues to find his feet in this league and was exceptional on the day. Also Rowlo (James Rowland) who scored his 9th goal of the season taking his tally to 30 goals in less than a season and a half - incredible return.

I hope everyone has a good week.

UTD

Dean.