Only the Reserves, who will be playing their last League match until 20^th December against Northleach Town, are at home this weekend as the First team travel to Lydbrook Athletic and the thirds make their way to the Beeches to take on Charlton Rovers III.

The Firsts lost both games to Lydbrook in the League last season and will be keen to make a significant improvement to that record as they head down to the Forest this coming weekend.  A 2-0 away defeat over a year ago and a 2-1 reverse at home last February, with our goal coming from this season’s leading scorer, Simon Delaney, made sure that the side that immediately preceded us as Division Two runners up, in 2005-06, were able to maintain a challenge at the top of the table that,eventually, enabled them to finish third.  Indeed, Lydbrook would, undoubtedly, have harboured high hopes for this season, which were, probably, not helped by the truncated nature of the start to their season, with both their second and third matches of the campaign in early September falling foul of the weather.  They preceded this enforced lay-off with a 3-2 opening day win at home to Kingswood but returned to league duties four weeks later with a 2-0 defeat at Cam Bulldogs, a result that remains the low point of their season so far.  In the League Cup, they made it all the way through to the final before losing 3-1 to Longlevens and it was the League leaders who imposed Lydbrook’s only other NSL Division One defeat this season when they triumphed 2-1 at home just 3 days after the cup final.  Since then, Lydbrook have played five  times, winning three and drawing the other, 0-0 at Shortwood United before losing at Broadwell last week.  Their home form is impressive, however, with that defeat to Longlevens the only blot on the copybook.

The Reserves, meanwhile, will be glad of a home game following 2 successive away trips and the prospect of no more matches at Cheltenham Road until just before Christmas.  Northleach Town will provide the opposition this weekend and the visitors will be hoping for a significant improvement on their fortunes against Star FC’s second string last season.  Their last visit to Bishops Cleeve, in September 2007, saw them concede 9 goals without reply, with Jamie Roberts helping himself to four of these and the away match last season, one of only three games played in the whole League on 12^th January, resulted in an excellent 5-1 win, in which Jamie scored 4 again!!  This means that exactly a fifth, or 20%, of the goals that the club’s leading goalscorer notched last season came in League games against Northleach Town and with last season’s 40-goal man in such good form recently, it will probably be with some trepidation that the visitors approach the game on Saturday, especially as they have conceded goals aplenty on their travels so far this season.  Indeed, their last away game, at Northway a fortnight ago, resulted in a 7-4 defeat and this was preceded by 6-1 defeat at Kings in the Senior Charity Cup and a 4-0 reverse at Cheltenham Civil Service in September.  Even on their more successful trips it would seem that they have been less than watertight at the back, with a 6-3 win at Cheltenham Saracens and a 3-2 success at Brockworth still making a marked contribution to the average number of goals conceded in away games.

The third team will be hoping to continue the run of form that has seen them score 13 goals in the last two games since returning to winning ways in emphatic style.  This weekend, their opponents are to be Charlton Rovers III, who have endured a disappointing season to date.  Indeed, the point that they gained from the 1-1 draw with Sherborne Harriers, at home, last weekend was only their third of the season, although it did move them level with Belmore United Reserves at the bottom of the table.  Their other two draws have, also, both been achieved at home, 2-2 in the local derby with Falcons and, most notably, 1-1 with League Leaders C & G on the day when the first round of the Senior & Junior Charity Cup was being played and, coincidentally, the club’s first team had a bye.  It’s a busy weekend for Charlton Rovers this week, though, with both the club’s other two sides engaged in difficult matches at the other end of the Golden Valley, so it is to be imagined that the home side might find it as difficult to deal with a resurgent third team as they did when suffering heavy early season defeats to Tewkesbury Town (0-5) and FC Electrics (0-6)