Friday Freebie: It's Time To Kick Off Again
The weekend heralds the start of the new season
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27th July signals the beginning of the non-league football season although absolutely not for all. We now reach the weird part of the year where league fixtures and FA Cup games intertwine with pre-season friendlies for the next two weekends and midweek dates.
It is a bit odd if you do get into the friendlies still, competitive action underway, points up for grabs, cup progress and prize money on offer while others are still honing their fitness and tactical tweaks at the same time.
Some do call it an early start and I suppose it is if you go back around 20 years or further, you wouldn’t find a league fixture before the calendar turned to August.
But with an extra round added to the FA Cup and that taking up the first weekend of the month, not getting at least one competitive fixture in front of that game is a bit of a no brainer.
The FA Cup is worth some decent money for clubs at non-league level and having that as your first competitive game is harsh. However, only the Step 5 clubs at County league level get the opportunity to flesh out a league game, the remainder will have no option but to potentially be out of one competition before the league campaign is underway.
With a staggered start for some it does give me a little breathing space for one of my other services. I write unique individual columns for clubs from the National League down to Step 5, unique as in each one for each club is never the same topic nor the same words.
I started that service in the middle of the pandemic seasons, with just a couple of clubs. This year sees me up to seven clubs with two new ones on board at different ends of the country, something to be excited about as it takes me out of the Southern end comfort zone.
Eased back in gently with one last Monday morning will turn into three this coming week and a couple more added to that for the following week, then it’s a month of 18 columns so far without any cup progress added to that, but I’d rather be busy than not!
So, this weekend it’s Step 5 games only for the competitive stuff, not very many have a midweek game as well but for me it will be staying Sussex based for this weekend and possibly Tuesday night as well (that might well change with a fixture added just now I’ve seen on Twitter), then we can get into the rest of the South from 3rd August!
Twitter is deciding for me the destination for the weekend, as you read the other week I’ve recently launched a new website to cover Sussex football so I’ve put it to the followers to decide on my Saturday game, I might well do the same for Tuesday evening depending on if my mind changes!
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