Ready or not, here we go....

Tomorrow sees our biggest leap into the dark since 2012 when we were thrown out of the National League, and into a Southern League hungry to kick the sh*t out of a fallen "big boy".  Our last experience of National North was the surreal Championship season where our team made up of slumming League One rejects, and buoyed by DRC's bottomless chequebook had slapped the rest of the division around so much the other clubs cheered at the prospect of seeing the back of us.

We re-enter this division tomorrow in a far humbler manner than we left it.  We have only half the team that won the Southern League last season.  We no longer have our big old, crumbly-comfortable Rockingham Road.  Or, indeed, our cold, hard, non-functioning Nonce Park.  We have our bobbly field and newly brightened floodlights.  We do have a handful of players that will be brand new to most of us.  We also have a new Manager, who was slipped into the role almost before Marcus Law had made his, still unexplained, departure.

Nicky Eaden is the new gaffer, and almost the poster boy for, "Mr No-Nonsense Northern Gaffer".  Overall the online Poppies support seem quietly happy with what Nicky has done and who he has brought in.  "Quietly Happy" at our club would translate as "Ecstatic" at any other club, but we like to keep our powder dry at Latimer Park!  A photograph of him holding a Poppies scarf over his head is still glaring by its omission, but I'll try not to mention this again....

AFC Telford will be slumming it with us tomorrow.  Their team will provide a stern test for our newly assembled team.  Their expected large support will provide an even sterner test for us supporters.  We've spent the past six years being a big fish in small ponds, where an away support that stretches to two cars raises eyebrows.  I really hope our vocal element, unused to being sung back at, add wit and withering sarcasm to their vocal repertoire, and perhaps lean less on anger and abuse.  If we resort to fury the first time away supporters mock Latimer Park's shortcomings, we're going to be for a long and angry season!

It's going to be a tough season.  Management, Officials, Team and Supporters are going to be as one more during 2019-20 than possibly ever before.  Let's give it a go, and remind this division of what they've been missing in Kettering Town Football Club!