Moredon FC had a fantastic start to the season last year going unbeaten for their opening 7 games of the season.
After such a positive start they was a real buzz around the club and hope for promotion but problems both on and off the pitch started to creep in and the decline down the league table began.
Team secretary, Paul Stevens, talks to us about the highs and lows of running a team in the #SDFL and, after learning lessons from last season, are hoping for alot more this year.
Q: Moredon have now established themselves in the #SDFL for the last few seasons. What are the best and worst bits about running a local football team?
The best thing about running a club is the group of lads you collect along the way, so many different faces come and go over time. When you finally develop your ‘squad’ and get to know everyone on a personal level and form a chemistry off the field, it gives you great ammunition to take to a Saturday afternoon game.
The other big plus for Moredon FC is they continued the support and encouragement from those who follow and back the team from the side line.
The worst thing has to be the financial side and the background running of the club, all the stuff behind closed doors, you just don’t realise how much you have to put into it, and also getting a regular turn out at training every week can seem difficult at times.
Q: Moredon finished near the bottom of the league last season, so what lessons have been learnt and how do you think your team will improve this season?
We started the season with high ambitions of finishing near the top, and going the first seven games unbeaten it looked as though we might actually get somewhere, however we weren’t ready for the underlying problems our team had and we didn’t deal with the problems at the time.
Not dealing with these issues came back to haunt us there after, all sorts hit the fan, but these problems have now been rectified and practices put in place to make sure we don’t go through that again.
Towards the end of the season we struggled to field a full team to play important games and the rest is just bad history.
Q: Pre-season is well underway for most clubs. How has pre-season gone for yourselves so far?
Pre-season, I feel has gone really well for us, we have brought in many new faces and integrated them into the squad nicely.
We feel that our team is as strong as ever, we have had a positive pre-season so far working with the lads and ironing out specifics problems we felt we had from last season. We have had a lot of games with a mixed run of results losing just twice along the road.
A couple more tweaks and I’m confident we can be a real force coming into the new season.
Q: What are the longer term ambitions for Moredon FC?
Long term ambitions include a constant run of good form and who knows maybe this year or next, grab some silverware along the way and potentially for Moredon FC to be remembered as a team that when you go there it won’t be easy to get a win, like everybody else we want to make teams earn their win if we are to lose.
Q: Who do you think will be pushing for top spot come the end of the season?
There’s been a lot of speculation in other articles so far but all teams are hoping to sustain a near top of the table finish, We are just solely focused on us.
All I’ll say is that it looks really open this year and with the new teams coming in and the older teams improving all the time it’s anyone’s guess, so good luck to all.