Both Cray Valley (PM) and Welling United might have won the pre-season friendly at the Artic Stadium but the game ended in an entertaining draw. After the game, Cray Valley manager Kevin Watson spoke about how different the summer had been to previous ones.

“We’re not where we need to be but we’re heading in that direction.” he said “We’ve still got two weeks left which is a considerable amount of time in football terms and we’ve got one more game left and numerous training sessions.” 

He continued “It has been a difficult pre-season because we’ve had quite a few injuries, relatively low level injuries, but there hasn’t been a lot of continuity in people’s availability and bits of pieces like that. We consciously started training quite early, before the games started, because the lay-off had been quite long and we felt the players needed more physical preparation.”

“By Tuesday’s game the majority of the squad should be fit and available. We got a couple of injuries today that we need to assess. It’s been a longer pre-season than usual and we’re looking forward to getting into more competitive football.”

Although they’re league season was curtailed early, The Millers returned in the spring to play in the London Senior Cup cumulating with a semi-final at Plough Lane against AFC Wimbledon. Watson said “We gave players the option of playing in that competition because we were conscious that they’d had a break and a lot of them hadn’t done football specific work so we were able to get a team out and it was a nice occasion because it’s a lovely ground but a lot of the players weren’t involved.”

For this season, there have been changes to the squad. “We’ve had a higher player turnaround than we’ve had in previous seasons, it’s still not that high compared to other teams, but we have new players to learn our expectations, tactically, and also us learning about them.” he said. “It’s a process and we’re getting there.”

Watson is happy that the squad is virtually where it will be at the start of the season. However, he did say “I wouldn’t dispute maybe bringing in another player if the right player became available but what we would be looking for is difficult to find because it needs to be the right personality with the right values and beliefs and they also need to be very good to be able to get into the team so am I proactively looking? Probably not as much as I would but I’ll keep an eye out and if someone came along, possibly.”

Players are being released by clubs higher up at present but Watson isn’t too interested in that. He explained “We’ve played Welling today. I don’t think there was a lot between the two teams so if somebody’s not getting into a Conference South team or a Ryman Premier team it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re going to get into our team. 

“I don’t think that football works like that. It’s fine margins isn’t it. We’re not desperate. We’re happy with what we’ve got but we wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of the right player with the right personality coming in.”

Managers and coaches often say that results aren’t important in pre-season games but Watson disagreed. He said “People say that in pre-season, and in the grand scheme of things they’re not, but you want to get a winning habit. You want to breed confidence. We haven’t won enough games, we’ve conceded too many goals but in the last two games we’ve looked a little bit more resilient defensively as a team which has been pleasing. I’m excited for the season because we’ve got a good bunch of lads so we’ll see how we can collectively apply everything we’ve worked on.”

The Millers start with a game against one of the favourites in Whitehawk. “I think they were watching us today.” said Watson. “We went down and watched them the other day. It’s a tough first game but everybody says that and it’s a tough first game for them so we welcome it, it’s at home and we’ll go into it and see if we can get the desired result.”  

Pictures supplied by Dave Budden.