ASIB on the WEB will be previewing the forthcoming weekend’s fixtures every week from now until the end of the season and in this, the first such preview since the launch of the online Magazine, we have two matches on which to focus as the Reserve team are without a game on Saturday, 2^nd February.

And what a weekend it is to start.  Yet again, the folly that is perpetrated every year by League administrators at this point in the campaign is fully in evidence.  What do they think they are doing, wantonly electing to organise fixtures in January and February when everyone knows this is the time of year when everyone wants to be doing other things.  Yes, ok, so we all want to be involved in a football club but surely the powers that be could take individual requirements at this time of the year into account when they formulate their fixture lists at the beginning of the season.

Yet again, they haven’t, so we are forced to get on with it.  The first team squad of 17 was diminished to 11 by the time the selection committee met but, fortunately, with the Reserve team taking a weekend off, this presented an ideal opportunity for others to stake their claim for a place in the side.  Shaun Gluyas stays with the firsts for another week, having impressed when he came on as a second half substitute in the home game against Tetbury Town last weekend and he is joined by James Mole and Mike Thompson.  This season, James has relished the opportunity to play along side the club’s leading goalscorer for the last 4 years, Jamie Roberts, and, so far, has weighed in with 12 goals of his own for the Reserves, whilst also scoring for the first team in the 4-2 win over Longlevens back in November.  Mike, meanwhile, has been in storming form for both the seconds and the thirds and has won the Man of the Match award in each of his last two games for the stiffs. He has also contributed 5 goals from his position in central midfield and all three of the new recruits to the first team’s will be up to the task if called upon when they travel to Broadwell Amateurs on Saturday.  Broadwell themselves currently occupy 12^th position in the Northern Senior League Division One table and are just one point and one place behind the first team, so Saturday’s match enjoys real 6 pointer status.  The home match in October saw Broadwell take all three points from a disappointing match with a last minute header.  Also, now that it is February, Northern Senior League games have reverted to 3.00 pm kick offs

The third team seemed to be even thinner on the ground but the squad assembled by joint managers Matt Harvey and Mark Elliot will do the club proud as they seek to progress in the Minor Charity Cup.  This is the Quarter Final stage of the competition that is open only to sides in Cheltenham League Division Five and the team should be buoyed by the fact that they dispatched the cup holders, Sherborne Harriers, in the last round.  Tewkesbury Town Reserves provide the opposition as the team pursue one of the club’s few remaining chances of silverware this season.  Cup competitions are not the club’s forte and, although we have made a better fist of things over the last couple of years, it remains a fact that we have not won through to a final since 2001.  Before that, the only appearance in a final tie in the 1990’s was by the Reserve Team in the GFA Intermediate Cup and as these games were lost 3-0 and 4-0 respectively, it is now almost 20 years since the club has scored in the final of anything.  This would have been in 1989, when the Reserves, then a lower league team, lifted the Minor Charity Cup, the object of the thirds endeavours this coming weekend when they look to give a debut to the latest member of the Bermingham clan to join the Star FC ranks.  All being well, Kieran Bermingham will line up in a much changed side from the one that stretched the team’s unbeaten run to 10 matches with the 3-1 home defeat of Gaffers Reserves last Saturday.