12-11-18 – News – Harriers get York City in the Trophy minutes after two go on loan to them

In an ironic twist of fate the Harriers drew York City out of the hat in the FA Trophy draw at lunchtime today. Ironic because only a hour or so earlier in the day we had sent two key players to Bootham Crescent on loan for two months.

With the game due to be played in two weeks time on November 24th it’s to be hoped that neither player will feature for them whereas Russ Penn, who signed for us from York on Friday, should have no such bar to him turning out for us due to it not being a loan.

Also ironically we played City in the Trophy last season too beating them 2-1 at home in the 1st round.

So earlier today it was confirmed that striker Joe Ironside and defender Kennedy Digie are to join up with fellow league side City for the next two months. This seems to be part of the deal that has bought Russ Penn back to the club. A deal that was done last Friday in time for the game at Nuneaton Borough the following day.

At the time of Penns arrival it was being rumoured that Ironside would be joining City on a permanent basis following a short loan spell but that wasn’t mentioned in the press release put out by KHFC earlier today. That may change at a later date but, with his contract ending at the end of this season it looks unlikely that we’ll recuperate any of the £25,000 fee that we are believed to have paid Nuneaton for following his initial loan spell with us that started in March 2017.

Joe has lost his place in the starting eleven in recent weeks due to the form of both Dan Bradley and Ed Williams. His twelve starts and seven sub appearances have still netted him six goals though so it could be said that those are future goals that we could miss out on.

Digie hasn’t featured as much as was expected this season after finally making it into the first team following four years with the Harriers. Most of his time with us has been spent on loan with other clubs and now he’s gone out on loan again. This move makes more sense to the fans than the Ironside loan due to the fact that it would be more beneficial to Digie to get game time and hopefully improve him as a defender for when he returns to Aggborough.

For the moment though we now have a severely weakened team with the loss of these two bench stalwarts. Russ Penn replaces one of them but we’re still short on numbers for cover and hopefully we may see more new faces soon. Just don’t cross too many fingers. 

Photo © KHFC