Well a busy pre-season saw some tough friendlies for the first team playing both Ely City Reserves and Littleport Town from the Kersham Premier Division. The pre-season also saw the departure of both Aron Spencer and Tom Parish who have gone off to Haddenham to try their hand. Ross Spencer is still recovering from his broken ankle and perhaps trying to come back a bit early. On the plus side Scott Manchett is back playing, Shaul Eldridge is back from ELy, both Ward & Richards are back after surgery, Michael Sellars has joined the club and two more promising youngsters will also be signing in the coming weeks.
The first team started slowly against Fox Burwell losing a game they should have won, but since then have had really good wins against Doddington and The Vine .
The reserves have had a perfect start to the league season winning their first two games, but with a weakendd and short side got a bad result in the cup.
Witchford have had some good wins against good teams, but equally have dropped silly points against weaker teams.
The team is looking thin on the ground with Ward out after an ankle operation, Adam Richards out with knee cartilage problems and worse still Ross Spencer out with broken bones and dislocated ankle. Best wishes from everyone at the club to Ross and hope you have a speedy recovery if possible.
A great start to the season for the first team who are still unbeaten. Having drawn their first league game away, they followed it up by beating local rivals Stretham. They then drew away against Bottisham in the cup from 1b, and comprehensively beath Milton reserves 6-1 in the first round of the cup.
The reserves started well winning 4-0, then lost the next week. They then won the following week but lost again the next week. But a good start for the reserves with a lot of young players finding their feet in the mens game.
The first team have benefited from this with a number of the young reserve players making the first team bench and some have progressed into the starting line up. All good news for Witchford 96.
Witchford 96 have formed a reserve side which will be playing in division 5C next season. With so many youth teams in the village a reserve side was needed so the youngsters had somewhere in the village to progress their football. With good coaching work being done at youth level, Witchford 96 now seem to have the pick of the youngsters when they finish their junior football at under 16's, instead of them playing outside of the village at Ely, Sutton, Littleport, Soahm etc.
This starts some exciting times at Witchford 96, with good young players coming through and experienced players staying on to help the youngsters. This is the progression the football club needs, if it wants to push on and start moving up through the leagues.
