CREDITON United is honoured to have the first South West Peninsula East Division fixture of the 2022-3 season at Lords Meadow against opponents Newton Abbot Spurs.

This is the only East Division match being played on the first day of 2022-3 season.

At 9.30pm on Friday, August 5, United could well be celebrating as SWPL league leaders, for one day at least, or sitting at the bottom depending on the result.

There have been big changes over the summer months with new first team managers, Ben Watson and Jack Furzer taking over from Matt Trenaman.

Ben is a very experienced footballer having played for Exeter City and, during his 18 years’ experience, Brighton, Bognor Regis, Gray’s Athletic, Forest Green Rovers, Bath City, Eastbourne, Dorchester Town, Truro City, Bideford and locally St Martin’s and Topsham.

He also represented England in the National X1 squad for the Four Nations Tournament in 2006.

His assistant Jack Furzer was also at Exeter City as a youngster and as an 18 years-old and also played for several seasons at Bideford.

First team pre-season friendly fixtures will be completed this coming Saturday, July 30, with a  local home derby match against Newton St Cyres based Newtown at Lords Meadow.  Kick off is 3pm.

Our results to-date are encouraging with a not surprising 6-1 defeat by Tiverton Town, then a 2-2 draw away at Beer Albion, a good  3-1 win at Launceston and an excellent 3-1 home win against Bideford A.F.C.

Our two new managers have spent  a lot of time assessing new players and have introduced so far five or six to add to the first team squad. Manager Ben Watson (36) still plays himself.

This coming season could be a very important one because the Football Association League’s Committee has agreed to resolve the problem of Western League Clubs having up to 400-mile round trip journeys to play fixtures.

The plan is to amalgamate the two divisions of the Western League with the two of the SWPL and form two Step 5 Divisions and three Step 6 Divisions.

Older club supporters will recall that we played in the Western League for five or six years but the travel costs at the time became too expensive and we had to revert to the Devon League.

The new Step 5 footprint will split the west country into two with Devon and Cornwall forming one division and Somerset, Dorset and the Bristol area the second.

Step 6 (our current level) will probably be split by a line from Bude to East of Plymouth, then another middle area for most of Devon and up to West of Minehead, Taunton and Weymouth. And the third split into East of these three.

Crediton’s Reserves team is also looking forward to their new season having been promoted to the D and E League Premier Division. Their opening game is away to Ottery St Mary on August 20.

A few of the players previously jumping between Second and First teams will now be able to regularly help reserves have another good season – and perhaps be aiming for the Devon Football League. Previous assistant First team manager Darren Pike has joined Danny Harvey and Mathew Leach to form an excellent management trio.

One small matter that needs to be mentioned is that ground entry fees for First Team games have been increased to £6 and £4 for age concessions. Gate charges have not been changed for many years.

On behalf of the Club I would like to thank everyone for their club support. With the addition last season of the Women’s team and, so it seems, the revival of the youth section’s Under 18’s team, things are on the up.

Chris Gillard