“I’d pretty much given up all hope of playing the game if I’m honest” was Corinthian boss Michael Golding’s honest assessment of his side’s Buildbase FA Vase tie against Hebburn Town this weekend.

The Tyne and Wear side will travel to Kent this weekend for a one-off Semi Final with a place in the Wembley Final at stake making this arguably the biggest game in Corinthian’s history since their 1972 formation.

We spoke to the boss ahead of Saturday’s tie at Gay Dawn Farm and the boss told us, “It really is the old adage and throw away line and the cliché of every game as they come and taking one game at a time, we had to be full focused on beating Sheerwater on Tuesday in the FA Cup.”

“Before as soon as the game finishes, and there way if honest a sense of it during the game within the players having half an eye on Saturday. We’ve had a great pre-season and what we wanted to do was carrying on the form into the FA Cup which is what we did which is good as the club and my record in the competition isn’t great, but we now turn our full attention to the game that we’re all really looking forward to a game we should have played six months ago!”

The Corinthian boss then confessed, “I think personally, and I know that the players did too I think, I’d pretty much given up all hope of playing the game if I’m honest.”

“We were told when we returned to socially distancing training back in June/July that we’d be given a date by the end of that week only for that week to go and then the next week went and we didn’t hear anything.”

“And you just start to think when you get the dates for the early stages of the FA Cup and the new Vase competition, it’s not going to happen. To then get the email and the phone calls just last week saying that this is going to happen and there’s going to be a draw on Friday for home advantage and this is the Final date at Wembley , it was almost a bolt out of the blue.”

“We’d heard rumours, all the communications with the FA was yes we want to finish the competition, it’s a priority! But then they wouldn’t pin down a date, and it went through June, the whole of July and then you get into the end of August and you still haven’t got a date. We genuinely didn’t have any idea, it just honestly looks like it was never going to happen and materialise.”

“I’ve said the whole way through that the Vase isn’t about me, it isn’t about the management team. If we win on Saturday, we don’t get to play at Wembley, we get to manage there which is fantastic but it’s the players, it’s the people behind the scenes , its for people like Sue Billings and Charlotte Billings who do so much for the football club, and days out in the Vase in the Semi Final and hopefully the Final if we get there, it’s about people like that for me; it’s for the players to enjoy and it’s the people behind the scenes and our small band of supporters.”

“We work hard on keeping the squad together and having a settled squad at our level is an exception rather than a rule. We’ve lost four players from the squad from last year, the majority of them were squad players rather than starters, and we’ve added one player returning and two completely new players.”

“We’re happy with where the squad’s at and we were unsure at the time of the signings of players and their Vase eligibility and who was going to be able to play and who wasn’t. Frustratingly, we only got the confirmation on Tuesday evening which made it difficult to plan the squad for our FA Cup tie this week without knowing who could or couldn’t play Saturday.”

“Fortunately, the rules are two new players so one of the new boys will have to miss out, so it’s not as bad as it could have been and in all honesty we would have happily taken all of last year’s squad – we’ve kept all of our starters and we’re very happy with where we’re at!”

“We were watching Hebburn in their Cup tie in midweek and I’d be surprised if they weren’t watching us, although I’m not too sure what they would have taken away from our performance, it wasn’t the best or the prettiest.”

“Both sides would have done their homework undoubtedly, you don’t get to this stage of the competition and leave anything to chance. We’ll work with the players this week and we’ll worry about ourselves, we will focus on what we can do and how good we can be.”

“There’s no denying that Hebburn are a great side and are rightly favourites for the whole competition and they’re favourites to win the tie. But what we’ll do is work incredibly hard and be incredibly organised and we will leave everything out on the pitch and leave no stone unturned in the hope that we can pull off an upset!”