Striker Sutherland Joins

Striker Zidan Sutherland has joined Rugby Town from Southern League Premier South side Evesham United.

The 24-year-old arrives at Butlin Road having started the new season at Step Three with The Robins and adds another proven attacking option to Grant Joshua's squad.

The forward is already well known to the Valley manager having previously worked with Joshua at Lye Town during their 2022/23 promotion campaign.

Sutherland has since gained considerable experience higher up the non-league pyramid, most notably during a season with Dover Athletic in the National League South in 2023/24 where he scored five goals in 32 appearances.

He then joined rising power Hednesford Town before loan spells at Stourbridge and Stafford Rangers last season before finishing the campaign with Darlaston Town.

Joshua is delighted to be reunited with a player he knows well: "I’m really pleased to be working with Zidan again - he's a lad who I personally have an awful lot of time for, as I do his family.

"His pedigree is top, he’s obsessed with scoring goals and we’ve done very well to take him from Step Three, where he captained his side last week."

The Town boss believes familiarity with both himself and the rest of the management team should allow Sutherland to settle quickly at Butlin Road.

"He knows how I work, he knows all of the staff that are here and he’s coming in to hit the ground running.

"In order to see the Zidan that I know, he has to be in a certain environment and maybe previous moves haven’t quite given him that. Sometimes a player and a club just need to be the right fit, and I believe this could be exactly that for both of us.

"He reached out to me because he wants to come and achieve something with us. I believe the club suits him perfectly. He’s got that confidence about him, which he’s had since he was 17, but he can back it up."

Sutherland strengthens an already competitive group of attacking players as Town look to build on the opening weeks of the new campaign.

"It adds welcome firepower to our squad and the supporters should quite rightly be excited about him.

"You can never have enough good players to pick from and this signing adds to what we already have in the building."