Broadbridge Heath FC boss on the ‘outstanding’ effort that’s brought Isthmian League football

Promotion optimism was abound at Christmas last season, sitting 3rd at that stage, writes Chris Simmons.

However, a string of new year poor performances resulted in a 7th place finish, just missing out on the club’s highest ever finish in the Premier Division.

Additionally, disappointing displays in the cups provided another reason to re-focus and plan for this season. In order to reach our targets of a top 5 finish and an improved showing in cup competitions we knew that we needed to strengthen the squad in terms of quality and depth as injuries and availability had had a detrimental effect on results last term.

Keeping faith with the majority of last year’s squad provided continuity and a solid platform to work from. The signings of local players, defenders Jack Frankland and Jamie Chesworth and talented forward Sam Lemon, were fantastic additions to the group and had been long-term targets.

The return of dynamic midfielder Matt Penfold from long term injury was a major boost as was persuading the experienced Centre-back Ryan Brackpool to return to the club from Three Bridges/Leatherhead.

We started the season strongly, blending defensive solidity with attacking flair, creating enough chances to win most games – a late 0:1 win away to Little Common on the first day of the season got us up and running in the league.

Despite disappointingly losing 3:1 to recently promoted Littlehampton in the FA Cup it spurred us onto a 12 match unbeaten run including impressive wins against Crawley Down Gatwick (2:4), Newhaven (0:1) and Eastbourne Town (3:0) in the league and an improved showing in the FA Vase including an excellent win versus well fancied Erith & Belvedere.

We exited the FA Vase to this year’s finalist Ascot United (0:3), still considered as a missed opportunity to go deep into this prestigious competition. Progress continued in the league, but sadly we lost club legend Jamie Taylor to a long term injury resulting in him missing much of the season, we were lucky enough to sign Alex Barbary from Three Bridges to add experience and goals to our forward line.

Poor losses in December followed by postponements for the whole of January left us trailing on points and behind on fixtures necessitating a reaction to keep in the title race, consistency was the key and a 14 game unbeaten league run including another a comprehensive win over title rivals Crawley Down (5:0) and a battling draw against Newhaven (1:1) were achieved.

Seeking to strengthen the squad ahead of the pressure of a three-games-per-week run in, Callum Chesworth (Worthing), Brad Peters (Epsom and Ewell) and Adrian Todd (Loxwood) were recruited and all brought an additional energy and enthusiasm to the group.

After a nervous loss at home to Crowborough (1:3) we managed to finish the job with back to back clean sheets and wins against Midhurst (0:3) and AFC Varndeanians (0:2), with Jamie Taylor fittingly scoring our final league goal – finally making club history by promotion to the Isthmian League.

A fantastic season and amazing achievement by everyone at the club and one that everybody should be proud of, it has been a long hard 3 years in trying to get to where we are today and the hard work and commitment from everyone on and off the pitch has been outstanding.

The players have been excellent, taking on board our philosophy coaching, we achieved 22 clean sheets in league and Cup this year and are the 2nd highest scorers in the league which is prenominal.

Thank you to the club and committee for putting their trust in myself and Sorro (Kristian Sorensen, Assistant Manager/First Team Coach the 3 years ago and the support they have given us since, I also can’t thank Sorro and the rest of our Management/Coaching team enough because I couldn’t have done this without them all.

The hard work starts now as we plan for the future in the Isthmian League.