PREVIEW: Eastbourne Borough (A) – Saturday 8th October – 15:00
The Terras take on Eastbourne tomorrow afternoon, looking to build on last Saturday’s excellent FA Cup victory, as the club searches for more points to push up the table.
The thoughts of manager Bobby Wilkinson ahead of tomorrow’s game:
On this week’s preparations: “We’ve had a good week’s work, obviously coming off the back of a victory last weekend helps. But we haven’t gone too deep into that win, we’ve simply moved on and concentrated on a new challenge this weekend against Eastbourne, where we’re looking for points.”
On what to expect from our opponents: “We sent our scout there to watch them, we’ve worked behind the scenes on their potential weaknesses. Eastbourne have strength and depth so we’ve worked hard in training to make sure we can be sharp and ready for tomorrow’s challenge.”
On squad news: “Luke Nippard is out tomorrow following last weekend’s dead leg, unfortunately he hasn’t been able to make it, despite his hard work in training. Xander and Cam are both a week away which is encouraging as it means the whole squad is nearly back together again.”
On Ben Gerring: “Ben will be in tomorrow’s matchday squad, he still needs to work a little bit on his fitness, he’s worked really hard this week so will be in the squad.”
On turning last week’s performance into good form in the league: “Well the challenge is to pick up points, the question is can we put on a good display? Can we show consistency, heart, desire, commitment, belief? These are all the things I want us to be showing week in week out. You never know what can happen in football, so we need to stay organised and be ready and raring to go tomorrow.”
@TerraStatman’s Facts of the Match
This will be just our 12th game against the team from East Sussex and we have a pretty even W5 D2 L4 tally against “The Sports” although we have made heavy weather of the last few games, initially going behind on each of the last four occasions! However despite these initial setbacks we only lost one of those quartet of poor starts.
Our first encounter was in the Southern League in 2003/04 under Steve Claridge, when a 1-0 win was followed up later in the season with 1-2 loss away. But worse was to come next season, when we would not gain a single point over the pair of league fixtures, in the inaugural Conference South season. We did seek revenge however in 2005/06 under Garry Hill on our promotion charge with two victories.
We would next meet in 2007 in the FA Cup in East Sussex, when a late flurry of goals spearheaded by Stuart Beavon sent us into round 2. Astonishingly that was our last appearance in Round 1 Proper of the cup – some 15 years ago – and something we hope to put right later this month!
In the 2008/09 Conference National season, we would meet again in league fixtures and both win our home games, but then would not cross paths again until 2019, this time in the National League South under Mark Molesley. Those games represented our last match-ups before this weekend, with both games ending in parity with a 1-1 draw away followed by a 2-2 stalemate away. In the last game, Baggie and McCarthy scored for the Terras, the latter being a direct free kick – the most recent scored by the team – some 30 months ago! In fact, set pieces have proved vital recently against this opponent, with 4 of the last 6 games including Weymouth penalties or free kick goals.
Several recent Terras players have featured for Eastbourne at some points in their careers and often on loan. Corey Jordan, Callum Buckley, Shaun Hobson, Yemi Odubade and Jordan Rose all had spells in East Sussex, and also current Weymouth midfield maestro Luke Nippard.
