So, we finally now know who we’re playing on Saturday 27th April in the Midland Football League play-off semi final, we welcome Quentin Townsend and his Stourport Swifts side to the Paycare Stadium.

I’m extremely excited to be in the playoffs for the second time in 3 seasons and with a shot at promotion, when you consider great sides like Studley miss out you know how well Darlaston Town have done to be where we are again, absolute credit from top to bottom of our club.

The staff and players are in good spirits, and everyone seems nice and relaxed now we’ve qualified, I’m determined that they all really enjoy this week.

We lost back to back games over Christmas to Studley and AFC Wulfrunians, we sat in our changing room post the AFC game and calmly challenged ourselves to not be overly emotional and to just be better the second half of the season, I’d made some whopping errors in the first half of the season that I believed I’d fixed and felt we were now in good shape if we stayed calm and ignored all the noise.

I identified that day that we needed 60 points in total to get the last play-off place and set ourselves the target of 33 points from the last 17 games - 6 more points than the first 17. We sat with the squad and identified where we would try and get the points, as it turned out 60 would have just missed out but it gave us a tangible target to aim for and not worry about the league tables. Interestingly, if we’d played our second half form over the whole season, we still wouldn’t have won the league with 79 points, but had we carried on our form in the first half of the season we would have missed the play-offs by 7 points finishing 7th with 54 points.

First half of season 1.6 Ave points per game - 27 points
Second half of season 2.3 Ave points per game - 39 points.

I’m under no illusions about the challenge we face next Saturday, Stourport Swifts have been in this league longer than I’ve been in management, they have far greater resources and more experience in Quent and his team than my Darlaston team and I, however we’re determined to do our best, our best is ok, therefore we’re going to enjoy the day no matter what.

This season has been incredibly tough, some good sides and top managers about, we don’t all see eye to eye, which is normal and understandable, but to manage any team takes a commitment that nobody fully understands until you do it, and if you do it properly then there’s every chance you’re an absolute raving lunatic as it takes some energy and sacrifice to do this job right, so hats off and respect to all the 17 other managers and committees in our league.

Hopefully, we see you all tomorrow night against a Chasetown XI who have kindly agreed to come and help us out in our preparation. It’s free entrance so please come and support the squad.

UTD

Dean