Biggleswade FC bosses happy with top eight finish
Biggleswade FC joint-manager Dave Northfield says the club can be proud of their season after they secured a top eight finish in SPL Division One Central.
FC continue to groundshare at Bedford Town FC and with arguably the smallest wage budget in the league, have again comfortably retained their step four status just two years after a second-place finish nearly saw them promoted.
And in a campaign that also featured a memorable FA Cup fourth qualifying round tie at home to York City, Northfield says it’s a season that can be looked back on with pride.
He said: “Obviously it would be nice to finish higher but you’ve got to look at the mitigating factors.
"We had to use seven different centre-halves due to losing four or five to injury and ended the season with only one available.
"We also lost our keeper to Leighton Town early on and his replacement on loan from Cambridge United was recalled with seven games to go, meaning we had a 17-year-old lad from the Stevenage school system in goal for the remainder, but after conceding five on his debut he did really well and we won four and drew one of our last seven games.
"So in the end we ended the season well having set ourselves a top eight target.
"The FA Cup run was obviously the icing on the cake. To be involved in that game was the pinnacle for the club and so many locally would have loved that kind of fixture.
"So overall it was a really good season. We had to rely heavily on experienced players like Adam Hunt and Lawrie Marsh among others, but apart from when we finished second a couple of years ago, that’s our best finish so far.
"We don’t have big resources and our wage budget is tiny, so to achieve what we have shows how well the club’s run and how hard we work to keep it together.”
Looking ahead, Northfield is now keen to see FC build on this season.
He added: “We’ll have Alex Marsh back from injury which will help and we need one or two positions strengthening, but our main issue this year was that we dropped 17 points to teams in the bottom five, so that’s something we need to work on because against the sides higher up we performed well, and those 17 points would have had us in a play-off spot this time around.”