The Cooks first team play their final game of the season tomorrow afternoon when they make the trip over the border into Leicestershire to play Lutterworth Town. The Swifts will finish 6th whatever happens tomorrow, but they do have the added incentive of giving their manager a winning send off as he takes charge for the final time. Josh Dixon will go down in history as the club’s most successful manager (to date anyway) as he guided them from the county league to the higher echelons of the step five UCL Premier division which is no mean feat for a club that ceased to exist for a while before restarting on the Leicester Road Playing Fields a few years ago.
They have returned to one of their former homes at Dunley Way and really turned things around on and off the pitch with a complete overhaul of what was just a pitch with a rail, a small clubhouse and dressing rooms into what they have today and without Josh’s input that wouldn’t have been possible.
The Swifts last six games read WLWLWL so we appear to be playing them at the wrong part of the sequence and they are likely to be looking to continue that run, especially after being hammered 6-0 at Harborough Town last time out. The have already beaten us 4-0 at Compton Park with the ever prolific Tendai Daire netting a first half hat-trick before Kade Lewis headed a fourth after the break, but since then they have dropped away from being one of the top two’s major rivals and the loss of Tendai Daire to rivals Harborough was another big turning point.
The Cooks currently sit 12th in the table, but defeat tomorrow could see us drop as low as 16th if results don’t go our way which is a country mile away from where we were after that excellent winning run last year. Recent performances have been well below par with a number of players simply going through the motions and collecting their pay which isn’t acceptable at any kind of level, let alone step 5. We are now seven games without a win with a -15 goal difference having shipped 20 goals during that run and have morphed into a lower-mid table team after looking like outsiders for a top eight finish at one point.
Kick-off is at 3pm tomorrow with the address being Kong Park, 39 Dunley Way, Lutterworth. LE17 4NP.
After this we have the U18s in action next Thursday when they complete their Jaymann Shield group with a trip to Whitworth Red, then two days later the Reserves bring their campaign to an end with a trip to Huntingdon Town.
