02-08-19 – Preview – Kidderminster Harriers Vs Leamington FC

The Harriers kick off the new season at home to local rivals Leamington FC tomorrow in a game that has many fans feeling a little uneasy. At the end of what must have been our most disappointing pre-season of all time we will be looking at a bare bones squad lining up on the Aggborough turf at three o’clock tomorrow.

Just a few days ago we had only one keeper but yesterday Cameron Gregory arrived on a six month loan to give Tom Palmer some competition between the sticks. On Thursday we pulled off a major coup by persuading Liverpool to give us one of their rising stars, Rhys Williams, on another long term loan. Up until then we had seen no one arrive since Correy Davidson two weeks ago and before that Richard Peniket, Cliff Moyo and Alex Prosser arriving here in June.

Those six new faces appear to be it for the time being and almost cover the seven that have left for other shores. Gregory has replaced Brandon Hall following his release to Hereford FC while Davidson is a straight swap for Joel Taylor who joined Chester FC just days after the season end. Also in defence we have Cliff Moyo (who will be the Harriers captain) and Williams who would be the replacements for Fraser Horsfall (Macclesfield) and possibly James O’Connor who now looks to be running down his playing time with us.

Up front Peniket is a shoe in for Joe Ironside who paved the way for Horsfall to join Macc and Prosser could be seen to be in for Kane Richards (Basford Utd) , Billy Daniels (Nuneaton Borough) or Liam Truslove (un-attached). All the previous loanees have returned to their clubs with none coming back to us for a second spell.

So that’s what’s happened in the past few months and it looks to have been a replacement exercise and not the improvement exercise we had been promised in countless State of the Nation videos. John Pemberton came in to manage us with the promise of money to spend and that obviously has not been forthcoming. In fact it looks like cuts to a crucial part of the clubs funding have been made.

So with that situation in mind we have to make the most of an unpromising start and hope that we can get a positive result to get us underway.

Last April Leamington gave us one of the shock results of the campaign when they beat us 2-1 at Aggborough in a game that we were expected to win. That came on the back of a 4-0 thrashing of them back in October of last year. Complacency and a lost dressing room was the reason for that defeat and now tomorrow we need to put it all behind us and start again.

Leamington haven’t been all that busy in bringing in new players and have elected to simply strengthen where needed. They do have the added bonus of a few quid to spend after striker Colby Bishop signed for Accrington Stanley during the close season.

They were forced into a change just a few days ago though when the former Harriers keeper, Tony Breeden, mutually agreed to leave the club following a training ground incident when it was believed that he had head butted team mate Jack Edwards in the face. The Brakes quickly bought in another former Red, Jake Weaver, on loan from Birmingham City.

They still have Callum Gittings and Joe Clarke playing for them and earlier today announced that Jordan Murphy was re-joining them on loan from Solihull Moors.

Photo © KHFC

Teams:

Harriers from:

Gregory, Palmer, Davidson, O’Connor, Higginson, Penn, Johnson, Moyo, R Williams, Prosser, Weeks, Stratford, Taylor-Randle, Butterfield, Austin, Chambers, E Williams, White, Peniket.

Leamington FC from:

Weaver, Newey, English, Gudger, Hood, Lane, Mace, Nicholson, Clarke, Dunbar, Edwards, Gittings, March, Taylor, King, Anderson, Murphy, Mussa, Shamsi.

Referee: Mr Kristian Silcock. Liverpool

Talk about the game here

Links to Leamington FC websites here

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