Ambitious Fleetwood gearing up for biggest game of the season
Fleetwood Town are a club going places, having announced that they are going to build two new stands to bring the capacity of the Highbury Stadium up to 6,000. This is to complete work set in motion last season with the construction of the £250,000 Percy Ronson Stand.
The sense of excitement has been growing among the followers of the UniBond League premier division club. “The gates are up from last season,” Tony Greenwood, the manager, said. “The average is 550 to 600 at the moment. We’re getting as many people as teams in the Conference North. If you take out Telford and Kettering, the big clubs, we must have gates that match the fourth biggest in the Conference North.
“With the work that’s going on to the ground, it’s all geared up for us to go up into the Conference North. It’s got to go hand in hand. The problem at Bamber Bridge when I won the league there [in 1995-96] and we should have gone up into the Conference was that the ground wasn’t ready.”
The success on the pitch is helping Greenwood’s cause in strengthening his squad. “We’re at a disadvantage here,” he said. “People say ‘you must be paying players a lot of money’ but a lot of that simply goes in enabling them to get here.
“It’s a bit like the situation that faces managers at Barrow. They’ve got to be able to pay players an extra £30 or £40 to be able to take them up there. But nothing helps more than a bit of success. Players are more than happy to talk to you when you’re second in the table and they can see what’s going on at the ground.”
The focus this season is on promotion after narrowly missing out on a place in the play-offs last season. “We were knocked out of the cup competitions early this season,” Greenwood said. “We didn’t field our strongest side in some of the ties. Last season we reached the semi-finals of the Lancashire Cup and won the League Challenge Cup. We were involved in so many ties that we had to play catch-up in the league. It does take its toll with injuries, suspensions and stuff, so this season we made our sole priority winning promotion.”
Fleetwood’s hopes of automatic promotion rest on overhauling Witton Albion, the leaders, whom they play away at Wincham Park on Easter Monday. “A lot of people have said ‘you’re unlucky, in every other year you would have been sure to go up’ but I don’t see it that way,” Greenwood said. “They have deserved what they have achieved. They have played with great consistency and have a great home record.” The match between Fleetwood and Witton at the Highbury Stadium was played midweek at the end of October before Fleetwood’s season’s best league crowd of 753 and finished 0-0.
If they cannot overhaul Witton, the incentive remains strong for Fleetwood to maintain second place in the table because it would give them home advantage in the semi-final of the play-offs and also in the final should they come through.
WALTER GAMMIE
and of course a resounding thank you to current chairman Andy Pilley
Posted by: singer | March 22, 2008 at 06:22 PM