“The toughest pre-season I’ve ever known” was the frank assessment of Ashford United boss Tommy Warrilow as his side prepare to face Whitehawk at Homelands this weekend.

“Undoubtedly, the toughest pre-season ever,” confessed Warrilow to KSN this week, “we get players thrown at us and without being choosy, I must make sure that they’re the right players for us, for the system and the changing room!

“You have to remember that we’ve had two seasons here and we haven’t finished any either of them, the first one we came in November time and there was a transition period where we got players in and out and we went on and got to the Play Off Final where we lost, and last year we were sitting nicely at the top before losing at VCD to go second and the season was stopped.

“So, it’s the old saying of might start OK, but it’s getting it right during the season and how you finish that counts! I’ve always live by that philosophy, I’m not panicking and in time, I’m sure that other players will come in; we will be looking and if anything comes along that’s better, unfortunately its football, they’ve got to be on their toes.

“I don’t want them thinking that they’ll just walk in and put their shirt on the peg and get a game. Its important we get that competition for places within the squad even though it’s a small one.”

Saturday will be Ashford’s first competitive game of the season, but Warrilow isn’t too happy that he starts on the Road to Wembley rather than with the start of their League campaign. 

He told us, “ The FA Cup has crept in early with the way the seasons been dragged out with the start dates etc, but it does feel weird as it’s the FA Cup and a very difficult tie at home to Whitehawk. With no disrespect, I always thought the first few rounds of the Cup were meant to be against supposedly lesser and weaker teams, but we’ve gone straight in at the deep end!”

“We managed to arrange a friendly at Margate in midweek after we played Folkestone at the weekend so that we could get a little bit of the spring back in our step after the drubbing we took last week.

“As I’ve said to everyone, pre-season isn’t the results, it’s about getting your shape right and getting time into legs, and this year match fitness is even more important as you’ve got to remember that the boys haven’t played any games since March, so who knows what will happen Saturday as there will be some very strange results as we’ve seen with some Leagues already.

“Games that you’d think would be a shoe in you’ve got struggles, we’ve just got to treat Saturday as another game and get on with it. It’s another tough one, but who knows as pre-season form can easily go out of the window!

“We got smashed by Folkestone pre-season last year and went on to have a good season so I don’t mind taking the good hiding that we did on Saturday just gone if we can repeat the form of last season until we were called to a halt.”

Ashford’s squad for the weekend is like many somewhat different to the one that finished last season as the boss explained.

“From trying to keep everyone, we’ve lost all our forwards from last year,” Warrilow explained, “we lost Dave Smith to Folkestone, George Purcell to Bowers & Pitsea and over the weekend we lost Jay May to Romford.

“We managed to sign Johan ter Horst from Folkestone so our forward line has changed, we’ve had a couple of boys down on trial and give one lad a deal, but at the back, we’ve got a complete new back four, and in midfield we’ve bought Bode (Anidugbe) back in after not being with us last year.

“I’ve managed to keep Motty (keeper Sam Mott) which is a huge bonus, but we’ll just get on with things, we seem to have to do this every year now. I was hoping to keep the nucleus of last year but we lost a few as like most teams, our budget had to be trimmed so the squad was always going to be smaller and as its gone on.

“We’ve lost a few more as people we did think were coming back and didn’t meaning that we’re ringing around to see who’s out there and not got the deals that they wanted, its only a couple of areas.

“We’ve been alright with the system and the way we’ve been playing. Obviously losing Jay on Saturday, just the timing of it more than anything; it’s bad enough losing him but the timing of it one week before we start was really the hard bit to take but that’s what happens in football!”