Dorking Wandering
The Dorking Wanderers FC Fans Forum
A first visit to the Testwood Stadium this weekend as we look to bounce back from a tough Easter at newly promoted AFC Totton. The Stags have had a good first season in the NLS and currently sit 13th in the league on 57 points. The Hampshire side have nothing to play for though, as relegation and promotion are both now impossible for them, and this means recent form has seen them pick up just 1 win from their last 5 games.
Marc said in the weekly update that Camp and Rutherford are possibilities for this weekend, but Pat Casey is unlikely to return until the very end of the season. Harry Pinchard will miss the game with the injury picked up on Easter Monday, while Paul McCallum is also a doubt. There was no mention of Tony Craig or Niall McManus.
Predictions:
Totton 1-2 Dorking (Prior, Lewis)
1,602 att.
Foulkes
Francomb Annesley Norville-Williams
Enslin Pybus Sidwell Lewis
F.Vincent
Carter Prior
Subs: Camp, Knight, L.Vincent, Moore, Pearson, Rutherford, Lawrence
The pizza van seems to be well received, but there is still a large expanse of the ground (dugouts side and away end) with no food and drink
I sit in the Stonegate stand so have no real issue with this but that is where there there is room for improvement, even if it was just a tea bar.
Tiered standing would be really good on the dugouts side.
I also think the Lampard Stand should be at the front of that side (ie up against the front rail, with the perimeter rail lowered) and anyone wanting to walk past it would then walk behind it rather than in front of everyone sitting down trying to watch the game.
If we do go up we really could do with putting that roof on the away end too, hundreds of northerners who have spent a lot to travel for hours to visit us shouldn't be getting soaked if it rains.
Shame about TC by the way, what a career, I remember him when at Palace at a young age.
"Why would I leave to join a League Two club? We're going there anyway!" - Marc White
Re Tony Craig, a sad way to end a career for someone who was a great servant to the club, never let the club down and played a big part in keeping us up when he first arrived.
Respect and appreciation are well deserved.
Re Tony Craig, a sad way to end a career for someone who was a great servant to the club, never let the club down and played a big part in keeping us up when he first arrived.
Respect and appreciation are well deserved.
Agreed, old traditional defender who actually enjoyed defending, whereas nowadays too many of them seem to prefer to attack. Remember his great performances at Crawley as well as Dorking.
@hemelwanderer Sad but inevitable I think. I was thinking he’d call it it day anyway regardless of the injury .
Has to be Francombe really I think moving into the center. Think we'll need his calmness. George K did not do a terrible job their against Horsham when he came on but seemed quite fanatic.
@dorking-eagle On this point about loans, and particularly given the injuries to Louie and Liam Vincent yesterday, is it possible for us to recall Hayden Gale from his loan at South Park, or is it too late for that? Other than George Knight or Francombe moving inside, I don't see what other options we have in the middle at the back.
I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened already, as well as bringing back Seb from Leatherhead. South Park have nothing to play for in their league and Leatherhead have already won theirs.
Will almost certainly be Francomb for Bath though as he played centrally a bit in pre-season when Annesley was injured. Knight can always cover as well if we need to start defending long balls, etc. The bigger concern is what we do for play-offs as we will desperately need Annesley to be back for those...
@dorking-eagle On this point about loans, and particularly given the injuries to Louie and Liam Vincent yesterday, is it possible for us to recall Hayden Gale from his loan at South Park, or is it too late for that? Other than George Knight or Francombe moving inside, I don't see what other options we have in the middle at the back.
Will almost certainly be Francomb for Bath though as he played centrally a bit in pre-season when Annesley was injured. Knight can always cover as well if we need to start defending long balls, etc. The bigger concern is what we do for play-offs as we will desperately need Annesley to be back for those...
Ok, well, we can forget that.
Full steam NLS 26/27!
Some ridiculously dominant stats:
Possession: Totton 32% - 68% Dorking - 3rd highest of the season
Shots (OT): Totton 7 (4) - 17 (6) Dorking
xG: Totton 1.17 - 2.76 Dorking
Passes: Totton 243 - 549 Dorking - Highest of the season
Duels: Totton 41% - 59% Dorking - 4th highest of the season
Top Performer (Dorking): Dennon Lewis / Harry Sidwell [7.8]
I think the opposition keeper has been highest rated player something like 4 of the last 6 games...
As the Crawley manager said after defeat on Saturday, there is only one stat that counts "Scoring more goals than the opposition". Unfortunately with our defensive and attack injuries, we are conceding more than we are scoring.
For those interested, we are up to 278 games missed through injury this season across the squad with 2 games still to play...
We had 211 total last season and arguably a bigger squad.
Dont really understand the never ending injury plague to be honest, although the pitch is terrible and is a partial explanation, many of the injuries gave occurred on grass pitches in away games (e.g Tony Craig and others), the physio team has been changed without improvement and there should be more than enough backroom experience and knowledge to ensure that the training regime shouldn't be the problem. Must be beyond the random bad luck explanation by now?
There are still a number of players in the squad who have proper jobs and doing all the DW work as well
I know I couldn't do two jobs, plus all the travelling in between - I would be knackered
I don't expect plumbers, electricians, surveyors, Royal Mail employees or accountants to give up their long term careers outside of football, particularly when over 30, but I would also imagine that the vast majority of the 'two jobs' players are now coming to the end of their time at DWFC.
I think another contributor is bringing players back as quickly as possible when perhaps not 100% fit.
Then of course age plays a part for those players who can't do a month of Saturday-Tuesday matches, the load is too high.
I had hoped Reece Murphy was to share the load with Jason Prior LAST season but that didn't really work out, and again we have Jason playing as much as he physically can again as too many others are injured again
Then of course there is our pitch, but that doesn't account for broken toes legs and even a spleen!
So there is probably multiple things to address in the close season reset.
"Why would I leave to join a League Two club? We're going there anyway!" - Marc White
There are still a number of players in the squad who have proper jobs and doing all the DW work as well
I know I couldn't do two jobs, plus all the travelling in between - I would be knackered
I don't expect plumbers, electricians, surveyors, Royal Mail employees or accountants to give up their long term careers outside of football, particularly when over 30, but I would also imagine that the vast majority of the 'two jobs' players are now coming to the end of their time at DWFC.
I think another contributor is bringing players back as quickly as possible when perhaps not 100% fit.
Then of course age plays a part for those players who can't do a month of Saturday-Tuesday matches, the load is too high.
I had hoped Reece Murphy was to share the load with Jason Prior LAST season but that didn't really work out, and again we have Jason playing as much as he physically can again as too many others are injured again
Then of course there is our pitch, but that doesn't account for broken toes legs and even a spleen!
Exactly this ^
I would say the pitch probably accounts for 70% of our issues as we definitely get more than the average number of muscle injuries, and we obviously get all those bad knee injuries as well. If I think about this season, I can only remember a small handful of muscle or knee injuries that actually happened away from home - Norville-Williams at Chippenham first game, Francomb at Dagenham and Pybus at Chelmsford in the warm-up.
Player profile is probably the next big one. As David said, we still have a fair few "part time" players who probably aren't quite used to the demands of being a full time footballer and must be exhausted from other jobs/commitments. We probably have a few too many historically injury prone players as well that probably need to be addressed in the Summer. The average age of the squad, although it has lowered a bit this season, is still a bit high as we currently have 9 players over the age of 30.
If you look at a couple of the players we signed in the Summer - Dennon Lewis and Frank Vincent - they are more used to full time football demands and have both played the most games this season. Vincent has actually featured in all 50 games while Lewis has only missed a couple.
I also agree that we could probably manager player minutes/availability a bit better. Alfie Rutherford is a good example of that recently as we keep trying to rush him back from the start when he keeps going off with hamstring injuries a few days before.
General rotation could be better as well as we don't seem great as resting and rotating key players when there is a chance to. Before the Totton game at the weekend, Harry Sidwell hadn't played more than 45 mins since Eastbourne away, yet someone like Pinchard has played 90 pretty much every single week since he joined (after playing 35+ games for Gloucester already) which ultimately resulted in an injury. I appreciate you want your best players to start every game, but when we have a pitch and injury history like we do, we possibly may need to look at rotation more than we would like in order to help spread minutes around.
Finally, we've obviously had some rotten luck this season. By my count, we've had 10 broken/dislocated bones so far - McManus x 2, Annesley, Craig, Pybus, Carter, Francomb, Norville-Williams, Muitt, Hebert. Even the 2 big knee injuries that Josh Taylor and McShane have had were both contact ones for a change. Add to that the bad tackle that Rutherford got that caused him to miss 3+ months, the unfortunate knee clash that caused Carter to miss 2+ months and even a strange spleen injury for Foulkes.
There are still a number of players in the squad who have proper jobs and doing all the DW work as well
I know I couldn't do two jobs, plus all the travelling in between - I would be knackered
I don't expect plumbers, electricians, surveyors, Royal Mail employees or accountants to give up their long term careers outside of football, particularly when over 30, but I would also imagine that the vast majority of the 'two jobs' players are now coming to the end of their time at DWFC.
I think another contributor is bringing players back as quickly as possible when perhaps not 100% fit.
Then of course age plays a part for those players who can't do a month of Saturday-Tuesday matches, the load is too high.
I had hoped Reece Murphy was to share the load with Jason Prior LAST season but that didn't really work out, and again we have Jason playing as much as he physically can again as too many others are injured again
Then of course there is our pitch, but that doesn't account for broken toes legs and even a spleen!
Exactly this ^
I would say the pitch probably accounts for 70% of our issues as we definitely get more than the average number of muscle injuries, and we obviously get all those bad knee injuries as well. If I think about this season, I can only remember a small handful of muscle or knee injuries that actually happened away from home - Norville-Williams at Chippenham first game, Francomb at Dagenham and Pybus at Chelmsford in the warm-up.
Player profile is probably the next big one. As David said, we still have a fair few "part time" players who probably aren't quite used to the demands of being a full time footballer and must be exhausted from other jobs/commitments. We probably have a few too many historically injury prone players as well that probably need to be addressed in the Summer. The average age of the squad, although it has lowered a bit this season, is still a bit high as we currently have 9 players over the age of 30.
If you look at a couple of the players we signed in the Summer - Dennon Lewis and Frank Vincent - they are more used to full time football demands and have both played the most games this season. Vincent has actually featured in all 50 games while Lewis has only missed a couple.
I also agree that we could probably manager player minutes/availability a bit better. Alfie Rutherford is a good example of that recently as we keep trying to rush him back from the start when he keeps going off with hamstring injuries a few days before.
General rotation could be better as well as we don't seem great as resting and rotating key players when there is a chance to. Before the Totton game at the weekend, Harry Sidwell hadn't played more than 45 mins since Eastbourne away, yet someone like Pinchard has played 90 pretty much every single week since he joined (after playing 35+ games for Gloucester already) which ultimately resulted in an injury. I appreciate you want your best players to start every game, but when we have a pitch and injury history like we do, we possibly may need to look at rotation more than we would like in order to help spread minutes around.
Finally, we've obviously had some rotten luck this season. By my count, we've had 10 broken/dislocated bones so far - McManus x 2, Annesley, Craig, Pybus, Carter, Francomb, Norville-Williams, Muitt, Hebert. Even the 2 big knee injuries that Josh Taylor and McShane have had were both contact ones for a change. Add to that the bad tackle that Rutherford got that caused him to miss 3+ months, the unfortunate knee clash that caused Carter to miss 2+ months and even a strange spleen injury for Foulkes.
I think much of this is true and I agree with a lot of want you both say. Especially the point on player rotation is spot on, we could have seen Knight and Sidwell much more for example.
i guess the counter argument is that situation (two job players) is not uniquely a DWFC issue. The reality is most teams at this level have players balancing work alongside football. If that alone was the main cause, you’d expect most clubs in the division to be dealing with a similar level of injuries, and they’re not. So I don’t think that explanation really holds up on its own.
For me, it feels like a combination of things – recruitment (including a few injury-prone players), how we’re managing player fitness and minutes, running core players into the ground and not rotating, and possibly bringing players back too soon. Possibly some nous too, I remember Muitt’s injury at Farnborough was him going in for a 50/50 tackle in the last minute with the game won. But I totally understand a lot of what has to happen when players are injured (other players playing more often) results in more injuries. The pitch and bad luck are part of it, but they don’t explain the scale of what’s happened compared to other teams in the same league dealing with very similar conditions.
A root-and-branch review of the squad fitness and load management is desperately required in the summer.
