Frustration was the over-riding emotion for Rugby Town boss Dave Stringer, after the club recorded a second consecutive near miss in the Central Division of the Evostik sponsored Southern League.
By
Jon Venner
Valley rounded off their season last Saturday with a 1-0 home win over Marlow, a result which saw them end up a place below the play-off zone in sixth – a repeat of their 2010-11 campaign finish.
Stringer- who took over the managerial reins from Martin Sockett last summer - reflected on the disappointment of missing out again.
He said: "Our ambition at the start of the season was to improve on last year’s showing and make the top five, so to ultimately come so close once more is very frustrating.
"Whilst I believe we’ve given it a good go overall, every time the door opened up for us, we just couldn’t quite get through it.
"It’s even more frustrating given the way the other results went at the weekend, which meant the final margin of failure was so small in the end."
Town's victory on Saturday saw them jump two places in the final table, after both Northwood and Biggleswade suffered last day defeats, and with fifth placed Beaconsfield also losing, Rugby were just two points shy of the play-offs.
However Valley's total points tally of 67 was four lower than their haul last time out, when they were five points short of fifth place.
Town’s campaign has been plagued with inconsistency, and Stringer accepted that was the root cause of their narrow failure.
He continued: “We had a decent enough start to the season, but even during that I felt we weren’t strong enough in certain areas.
"That proved to be the case and we had a rotten couple of months, before we rectified it and looked a much better side in 2012 – when we only lost five times in twenty one games.
"I’m fairly sure that if we had started the season with the squad we ended up with, we would have comfortably made the play-offs."
Of the starting line-up from the season opener back in August , only three – Gary Moran, Tyrone Fagan and skipper Nik Preston – made the opening eleven against Marlow last Saturday.
Stringer added: "However even with the improved line-up, we still threw away too many silly points and didn’t take advantage of the opportunities that were there for us the run-in games."
In the league, Valley started their campaign with just one defeat in their opening seven matches, but then followed that up with only one win from nine, before reversing fortunes significantly around the turn of the year.
However, Rugby began to stutter again as the season drew to a close – including a crucial run of five games without victory in March.
Stringer said: "Going into the final couple of months, we were probably favourites to get that top five finish. However at Ashford we were somehow beaten despite dominating, and then lost our way in front of goal for a while, and couldn’t finish off the likes of Northwood and Beaconsfield – which ultimately cost us."
Looking forward to the 2012-13 season, Stringer remained confident that he can finally push the club up to the next level of the non-league football pyramid.
He explained: "We believe that we now have a squad more than capable of doing well next year. It’s important that we keep the nucleus of the group together though, and with a couple of new additions we should be challenging at the top again.
"I have spoken to most of the lads and the feedback from them is good in terms of their plans for next season. Obviously other teams will make approaches over the summer, but we have built a good spirit here, so hopefully that will count for a lot." |
