Whilst the final qualifying round of the Emirates FA Cup will take a lot of the headlines this weekend, there are also important League games being played with possibly none as important as the one at Champion Hill where third placed Cray Wanderers travel to face the side directly below them – Dulwich Hamlet.
Such are the way that the fixtures have been arranged that this will be the second time in the league inside eleven days that the two sides have faced each other and Cray boss Tim O’Shea admitted to KSN this week that he would love the same start from his team as he got when the two sides met at Flamengo Park just eleven days ago. When the home side raced into a 3-0 lead and went onto win 4-2.
“We are actually playing back-to-back league games now for the first time in a while; our last league game was, as you said Dulwich at home and now our next one is the same side away!” he told us.
“It’s strange how the games have worked out like this I think it was a fixture being moved or something but we are looking forward to it as it is a fixture that you look for – we played them last game of the season last year and it was a great occasion; I’m sure there will be over two thousand there on Saturday which will be lovely!
“Anywhere that has a decent home crowd you want to start well and dampen the spirits and if we start Saturday like we did the home game when we were two up inside seventeen minutes, we’ll be more than happy!
“We’ll go there with nothing to lose as we have won the home game against one of our rivals and so they will certainly want to put the record straight and we will be meeting a Dulwich side determined as it is such a quick turnaround to put the record straight. It’s going to be a real tough game!”
Cray travel with just one defeat in their opening ten league games and O’Shea admitted, “I’m seriously delighted with that! We’re fourth having played some good sides – we’ve gone to Lewes, we’ve gone to Carshalton, Ramsgate and played Folkestone and Dulwich at home.
“We’ve played some “big” sides in our ten games so it’s nice, probably unexpected if I am being brutally honest but we now have four really big games coming up (at Dulwich on Saturday, away to Chatham, and then at home to St Albans and Dartford) I think that we need to see where we are after these games and that may give us a little bit more of a truer bench mark on where we are at!”
“I am going to learn an awful lot about the boys by the end of October. As individuals and players they have to stand up and be counted, they have to back themselves. We believe that we have the best in every position and rightly so, we have brought the guys in for a reason, and now each and every one of us including the coaching staff, we have to back ourselves and go toe-to-toe with the big guns. I’m looking forward to it, I really am… we’ll look at each game of course on its merits but Saturday is going to be a real tough game!”