TT PREVIEW

Gabriel talks about the Towners

ABOUT ME

I’m Gabriel, and this will be my tenth season (yikes!) supporting Enfield Town. I’ve been a director of the club for two years and am also still a regular volunteer, editing our matchday programme as well as taking care of our website and social media among other things.

LOOKING FORWARD TO 24/25

Absolutely – there’s still a real excitement amongst our fanbase ahead of this season. It’s our first campaign in the sixth tier as a club, so obviously we’re relishing the challenge – and as far as opening days go, it doesn’t come too much tougher than a trip to Plainmoor! We had waited twelve years since our last promotion and had twice before been beaten in the play-offs so there was a great deal of joy when we finally reached the National League. For our older supporters, I suppose it’s also a step closer to where the old Enfield FC used to compete.

HOPES & EXPECTATIONS

Staying up is the hope, frankly, and with any luck finally reaching the First Round of the FA Cup having fallen at the final hurdle three times. I know that others, not least the management team, may well be setting different targets for the lads, but I’d be delighted with survival. Do I expect it to happen? Am I speaking from heart or head? The jury’s still out. The squad have had to gel pretty quickly in the latter stages of pre-season, but in terms of the quality of our reinforcements, and the core staying on from last season, you’d like to believe they have enough about them to pit their wits against a good number of teams in the division.

PRE-SEASON

Honestly, not ideal. We’ve had some horrendous luck with a number of the boys out with illness and injury over the past few weeks; not to mention a key defender departing a couple of weeks before the big kick-off, and striker Marcus Wyllie having been given his shot at the Football League with Gillingham. That’s made the management team’s job extremely difficult indeed, both in terms of recruitment and drilling the side into a competitive unit. Our form has been all over the place, but we responded to two chastening home defeats with a 3-0 win at Ware in our final outing, which hopefully puts a little wind back in the sails.

KEY PLAYERS

Sam Youngs is certainly one. He’s approaching 300 appearances for the club, and clocked up 31 goals 11 assists from 52 games in midfield last season. A fans’ favourite and for good reason. Another is goalie Rhys Forster, who I thought had a very solid debut campaign between the sticks, keeping 15 clean sheets and displaying some superb reflexes at times, coupled with some rather riskier sweeper-keeper antics… Hopefully 24-25 will be another successful campaign for him.

THE MANAGER

We’re lucky to have Gavin Macpherson at the helm. A thoroughly decent bloke off the pitch, and on the pitch, he and his wider management team ended their debut season with us wearing Isthmian Premier Play-off medals round their necks. He’s been fully understanding – and supportive – of our ownership model, and has continued to build a competitive squad with a good balance of youth and experience using the resources at his disposal, just as he did at Met Police before joining us. He and assistant Jon Nurse had been in place for a number of years at the Met, and had consistently punched well above their weight with several play-off finishes and impressive runs in the FA Cup.

TRAVELLING SUPPORT

I’d certainly like to think we will have a good following! There’s something wonderfully tangible about the buzz before a game like this, spurring Towners in exile from Colchester to Cornwall to declare on our forums that they’ll be in the away end. We’re taking a couple of coaches and there’ll be a good few making their own way by rail or road, so I’d reckon around two hundred.

FACTS ABOUT THE CLUB

Well, we were the very first senior football club in the country to be entirely owned and run by our supporters when we were established in 2001. Fans of a certain vintage may remember an Enfield side coming to Plainmoor in the mid-90s; that was the former Enfield FC, whose Southbury Road ground was sold off before spiralling into homelessness at the turn of the millennium, and then eventually bankruptcy in 2007. The Enfield Supporters Trust voted overwhelmingly to start afresh and ensure a football club remained in the London Borough of Enfield, and 23 years later we’ve made a pretty decent fist of it. Our friends at FC United of Manchester and AFC Wimbledon followed in our footsteps and we’re delighted at the progress they too have made taking on the fan-ownership model. We’ve got almost 500 members/owners across seven countries and counting, and last season got to play in Denmark and Italy as part of the Fenix Trophy.

PREDICTION

Hmmm. Of course, the place will be revitalised with the new ownership and a new squad in front of what will surely be a huge home crowd. That said, if we manage to weather the storm for a good chunk of the game, I’d like to think we could nick something. I’ll plump for a draw; 1-1.