Sevenoaks Town kick off the new Isthmian League season on Saturday with a visit from Ramsgate, the team many are tipping for Southeast division honours.
Boss Harry Hudson spoke to KSN this week and is under no illusions about the test that his side faces in the next nine months, but also made it clear that he’s under no pressure from the Club’s hierarchy.
“We’ve had a long pre-season, but if I’m honest in the end we could have perhaps done with another week,” Hudson admitted.
“We didn’t expect to be involved in the FA Cup last week as we had a decent run in the competition last year, but this year it wasn’t the case. It wasn’t as smooth a pre-season as I would have liked.”
“This season is going to be at least as tough as it was last year as we’ve only actually had one relegated team come into the Division as opposed to the South Central who had two or three and that seems to always mean that the teams coming down are automatically of a higher calibre.
“But then teams that are still in the League have strengthened really well and in that regard I think it’s probably in the same way that last year there were ten to twelve Clubs with a shot at the Play Offs, I think that they’ll be a similar number this year, I think it will be very difficult again definitely!”
“Apart from being away, I think we’ve probably got the toughest start,” Hudson agreed.
“Ramsgate are definitely title favourites, I don’t think that there’s any dispute on that across the League considering the resources that they have, and to be fair, Ashford, who we play second, along with Sittingbourne are three teams who I would definitely expect to be there or there about come the end of the season. Saturday will be a tough test, but you’ve got to play everyone twice in the season, so for us bring it on!”
“Because our pre-season has been quite disruptive, playing already in the FA Cup at Lingfield last weekend, helped us get some of the cobwebs out in a really good test, but there were things where we may have got punished against Ramsgate. So hopefully it will help us playing a Cup tie before the League season starts, but who knows?”
“We did a lot of our business very early on and we’ve secured a lot of our top targets which was really nice,” the Sevenoaks boss said.
“We’ve subsequently made a couple of changes and brought a couple more in in the last ten days, our hand was forced with one who picked up a long-term injury but in general, we’re really pleased.
“We had areas where we needed to strengthen and barring one or two top targets, as you’re not going to get everyone, I’m really pleased with the recruitment and happy we retained everyone we wanted to retain so I don’t think that we can complain too much at all!”
“My remit as manager of the Football Club is to stay in the League, the Clubs going through some major redevelopment with new changing rooms, stand and bar and a multi-million-pound development happening at the Club comes off we don’t want to be at Step five obviously but there is no panic for me to get the Club promoted.”