WE’RE CHORLEY IN THE PICTURE!
ANDY PREECE says Chorley have come up with the perfect answers for how to beat the play-off blues.
The Magpies were all set to take their place in last season’s National League North top seven — only for a remarkable turnaround by Gloucester City to win their final day showdown with the last kick of the game.
It meant the Tigers were able to leapfrog Preece’s side and consign them to a summer of what ifs.
Departures of top scorer Connor Hall to Solihull Moors and Jon Ustabasi, who joined AFC Fylde, saw 36 goals walk out of the door too.
But Preece’s side have found the perfect response, with Tuesday night’s 4-1 win at Banbury United moving them up to third.
“We are a team that people expect to be in and around the play-offs but that only tells half the story,” Preece told
“Financially, we are down in the bottom half. We punch above our weight year-in, yearout and you always think, ‘When is it going to be that year it might go wrong?’
“But, for us, it’s going really well. To be third at this stage — although it’s early and really tight — we’re delighted. Credit to the players. They’ve been fantastic.
Sacrifices
“You see teams make the play-offs, they don’t go up and then they have a hangover. But for us to be in the play-offs up until the last kick of the game, and the way it happened, you just wonder how that’s going to impact everybody. “Not just the players, but the fans and everything around that. Is there going to be a real negative vibe?
“We drew the first three games and then you wonder where that’s going to go. But everyone was really positive.
“We worked really hard in pre-season. Our lads come in pretty much every day for four or five weeks. That’s where we do a lot of our work to catch up with the full-time teams. We’re part-time, we’ve got to find a way of competing with the fulltime teams. The lads make a lot of sacrifices but we’re getting our rewards.”
And Preece says the question of whether to move towards a full-time model at some point in the future is one to ponder.
“It is hard to bridge that gap and we’ve seen over the last three or four seasons that fulltime teams have gone up,” he said.
“Us and Altrincham are maybe the ones who have broken that cycle recently.
Relationship
“It is getting more and more difficult and you’ve got to find other ways. It’s not impossible.
“But when you get Scunthorpe coming into the league, with what they’ve got, although they haven’t run away with it yet, you get that feel at some point they will pull away.
“So the league is getting more where you think is it going to go more like the National League where, eventually, the majority of teams will be full-time?
“It’s something we’re talking about now. What do we do to progress? You look at teams below potentially coming up too.
“So we have to think along those lines. I know other clubs are looking at it but it’s tough as it costs so much.”
While the club are now under new ownership, the boss has a familiar face to call chairman — former Magpies boss Jamie Vermiglio, who Preece has both managed and been assistant to.
“We’re such good mates it doesn’t affect anything,” Preece said. “We’ve always worked well together as a team. Sometimes you just have that relationship with someone where you just know what each other are thinking and what each other want.
“When the new owners wanted someone to bridge that gap between me and them, he was the ideal person. He knows everything about the football club.
“He’s really enjoying himself and that side is something he wants to do more of going forward.”