Swindon Supermarine vs Poole Town – Match Preview
How often does fate determine that our league meeting with our cup opponents follows the week after. That is the case this week as we make our second trip to the Webbswood Stadium in eight days. After the 2-0 replay win on Tuesday evening, we can look forward to a home second qualifying round tie against Taunton Town, to be played on September 14th.
Swindon will be eager to put their recent league form behind them and collect three valuable points. They find them selves just above the drop zone with only the win over Hungerford (2-0) and the draw with Havant & Waterlooville (1-1) earning the team any points. They will be looking for their first home win of the season (P5 W1 D1 L3 4points). Marine finished last season in 16th place (P42 W13 D10 L19 49 points) which was something of a surprise as in the previous campaign they narrowly missed the play-offs. Zack Kotwica has really impressed since his loan signing from Swindon Town collecting the man of the match award more than once. He is a constant goal threat who will undoubtedly keep our back line on their toes.
No matter how optimistic we are there is little chance that we will repeat the opening day 7-2 victory of last season. We followed this up with a 1-0 home win in January.
Steve Tulley and his men will now have a good insight of what to expect from Swindon and will not be underestimating them in any way. In Peter Leppington’s FA Cup replay match report, he said: “A very impressive performance by all the Poole team. Yet again another solid defensive performance – only 3 goals conceded in 7 games so far this season. Hewlett looked a real threat up from and was unlucky to not get on the score sheet. Midfield battled hard and controlled the game well. Clarke’s goal was world class. Swindon are a good side and we should not under estimate how impressive this performance was.”
We know that we will be missing Charlie Davis due to injury but we may welcome new signing midfielder Charlie Cummins who has signed on a month’s loan from Exeter City. Steve mixed up the forward options on Tuesday by starting Tom Hewlett and holding Toby Holmes back until the sixtieth minute which seemed to be the correct decision as Toby responded with the 79th minute goal which all but sealed the tie.
Our own league for has been good (P5 W3 D1 L1 10 points) with just the loss to AFC Totton blotting our copybook. We have had good wins against Taunton Town and Wimborne Town at home and Marlow away.
So, let’s get behind the lads as we endeavour to keep our positive start to the season going.
Enjoy the game.
Neil Wellington.