Kentish Express Ashford & District
Kedwell’s playing it safe
Ashford United manager Danny Kedwell felt he had no option but to cancel this week’s friendly against Maidstone United.
The Nuts & Bolts have been hit with a number of injuries, including defensive issues that led to Kedwell playing centrehalf against tenants Kennington on Sunday.
Kedwell is confident any problems he’s got at present will sort themselves out by the time the Isthmian League season kicks off - but prefers to have his players in training rather than take any more risks with another tough outing.
“We had to cancel it,” he said of Tuesday’s scheduled game. “We haven’t got the players.
“You have to be careful and we have had so many games in the last two weeks. We are only two weeks away now so I had to cut it right down.
“We have injuries and people have been going on holiday, so it was just unfortunate.
“I had only had three training sessions. It was good to have all those games but now I have two weeks of Tuesday-Thursday sessions to look at things.
“In the first few games everything seemed to be falling into place early but we couldn’t really work on anything and we lost three on the spin.
“I know where we were going wrong and now we’ve got time on the grass to sort it out.”
Kedwell’s side have a friendly this Saturday at Walthamstow (1pm) before hosting Egham Town in the FA Cup extra preliminary round on August 3.
They kick off their Isthmian South East season away at last season’s SCEFL Premier Division play-off winners Erith Town the following Saturday.
Kedwell’s men played Dartford last Saturday, losing 3-1, before beating Kennington by the same scoreline the following day.
The Ashford boss headed in an early opener against Ton before goals from Noah Carney and Mack Reilly sealed the win. United had three first-half goals ruled out for offside.
Carney scored a late goal in Saturday’s game against the Darts.
Considering the disruption, Kedwell was pleased, saying: “We played really well against Dartford, dominated the possession, but just didn’t take our chances and got punished.
“I had a centre-half pull out in the warm-up and I had another player pulled back that I was looking at by his club in the morning.
“I had to play players out of position as well and they did it, not one bit of moaning from them, which is good.
“I had to play on Sunday and scored but then had another centre-half come off injured so I had to go in and play there.
“I had two centre-backs on holiday, two injured, and one half-injured.
“Craig Stone did his hamstring a little bit so had to play Saturday with half a hamstring, we were struggling.
“He came off after 70 minutes but we played really well, the style of play I want to play.
“They did what I asked for and the other stuff will come.”*