Following a very welcome weekend on which all three sides won but which probably came just a week late, the club could do with more of the same this Saturday when each of our three sides approach vitally important League games with the need for all three points.

The First team are at home to Lydbrook Athletic and the two teams on show at Cheltenham Road in the Northern Senior League match at Cheltenham Road on Saturday will be two of the three sides in the middle of Division One who are locked onto 27 points.  The other is Tetbury Town, over whom the Firsts completed the double last weekend with their excellent 2-1 away win, and the firsts have games in hand over both the other two members of the “27” club.  Lydbrook Athletic will arrive at Cheltenham Road having endured a seemingly frustrating and resolutely inconsistent season that can be no better summed up than to examine their last three results.  A week ago, our visitors this coming weekend gained a creditable 1-1 draw away to Gala Wilton that came just 7 days after they had overcome Shortwood United Reserves, at home, by the odd goal in seven.  This was proceeded, however, just a week earlier, by a 2-0 home defeat against the League’s bottom side, Wotton Rovers,  that gave Wotton only their third victory of the season.  That these results were preceded, in January, by a home victory over Cam and an away defeat at Brockworth just seems to confirm that Lydbrook have waged an unpredictable campaign, even though they finished last season in third place behind Slimbridge and Bishop’s Cleeve Reserves.    Nevertheless, for the high point of Lydbrook’s season so far, you probably don’t need to look too much further than the Northern Senior League Cup, in which they reached the final, only to succumb to Longlevens 3-1 at Tuffley Rover’s ground in early October.

The Reserves travel to Northleach Town, who also make something of an unpredictable habit of inconsistency.  The home match between these two sides, at the tail end of November, resulted in a 4-1 win for the Reserves in which the visitors registered their only strike in the last minute and Northleach have remained doggedly erratic ever since.  Their first match after Christmas saw them hammer Brockworth Albion 7-2, at home, and then embark on a 4 match run of defeats in which they conspired to lose 5-2 at Winchcombe a week later, then 3-1 against AC Olympia, followed by a 2-1 home defeat against Cheltenham Civil Service that preceded a 2-0 loss at Bredon.  That took care of February but now that we are in March, Northleach seem to have turned a corner, recording successive wins – 1-0 at home to Northway a fortnight ago and 3-0 just round the corner at The Newlands against Dowty Dynamos last weekend – for the first time this season.  With the aid of their distinctly idiosyncratic pitch, which would probably not be out of place in the Stroud League, this all seems to add up to making Northleach Town distinctly dangerous opponents as the Reserves seek to maintain the pressure at the top of the table. 

The Third team welcome C & G to Cheltenham Road in the fervent hope that they will actually be able to stand up this time when they play the team that has lead Cheltenham League Division Five for virtually the whole of the season.  C & G are currently 8 points clear at the top of the Division and have reached the Semi Final of the Minor Charity Cup as well as the Final of the GFA Primary Cup, so they have had a pretty impressive season but, even so, little can be derived from an analysis of their 4-0 success over the thirds at the beginning of January.  It was the only game played in the Cheltenham League that day, as ice took its hold over local pitches, and something of a farce was the result as the third team’s game plan was as frozen as the playing surface.  It is to be hoped that the elements make rather less of a contribution this coming weekend, although it still has to be acknowledged that it is now well over 4 months and 14 matches since C & G last failed to win, with the club’s only defeat of the season being inflicted by Tewkesbury Town on November 8^th.  Prior to that, Charlton Rovers had managed to force a 1-1 draw in a League game in the middle of October but, since that defeat, it has been wins all the way for the Division Five table toppers, who now find themselves with a goal difference of 77 and needing only 8 more points from their last 6 matches to be certain of promotion.