Time to reflect on season so far for Horncastle Town bosses

​Rawden and his brother, Will, took over in the summer and have so far overseen six league games, with one win and one draw so far getting them points on the board.

And John feels that although the challenge is a considerable one given Horncastle’s young side, he and his brother have enjoyed it so far.

He said: "It was great to come back to the club and Will and I really enjoyed pre-season, which went really well, but we were under no illusions that the start of the league campaign would be difficult.

"The club have struggled a bit over the last three or four seasons but having had a good run-in at the end of last season, we wanted to give the youngsters here the chance to build on that.

"It’s gone OK and we’ve got a lot of young players coming through, with four or five teenagers starting each week, one or two on the bench and with the reserves having lots too.

"So the future bodes well and at a club like this we have to be able to produce our own players and if we can keep this group together, in two or three years I think we’ll be a very good Lincs League side.

"Results haven’t been the best but they were sort of expected – we weren’t happy with a couple of the results and the performances so far haven’t been great, but on the flipside we’ve had a couple of positive results and performances have in parts been very good.

"But we need to improve, so we’ve made three new signings in Brenden Parker from Grimsby Borough, Gabor Szucs on a dual registration with Harrowby, and Simon Owusu who is currently a serving soldier down in Rutland, which will strengthen the spine of the side and give us a bit more experience and know-how to complement what we’ve already got.

"It’s a long-term project and there’s lots of good young players in the town, and I’m adamant we can compete with any team in this league on our day, and I think once we can get some more points on the board we’ll go from strength to strength.”

Horncastle’s last game was a 3-0 loss at Wyberton last Wednesday, although Rawden felt the scoreline was a little harsh on his players.

He said: "At Wyberton I was really content with how we played for 50 minutes and how we went about keeping Wyberton at bay as they’re a strong, powerful side we knew would cause us problems, and we actually came into the game offensively before half-time too.

"Ultimately it was a defensive mistake that allowed them to go in front where our lad let their player go past him and pulled him down for a penalty, and they then took control of the game, although I felt 3-0 was a bit unfair on us and that 2-0 would have been a fairer scoreline.”

Horncastle next play on Saturday, October 5 when they’ll go to reigning champions Nettleham who have won five out of five so far, including a 6-0 win at the Wong earlier this month.