Warrington Rylands manager David McNabb has labelled the final week of preparation ‘massive’ as the clock ticks down on their first season in the Northern Premier League Premier.
The FA Vase and multiple promotion-winning manager also paid tribute to the legendary departing goalkeeper, Graeme McCall, who left the club last week.
Pre-season results for the Northern Premier League West champions haven’t always been easy reading with their latest defeat coming against Bootle on Tuesday.
Rylands go into the upcoming campaign on the back of three promotions in as many seasons with their famous FA Vase triumph behind them as well.
They have faced the likes of Bala Town, Salford City and Chorley during the build-up to the new season. For the Rylands boss, he has came away with a number of things to think about.
He told Off The Park: “I think we’ve learnt a lot, we’ve had some good performances, some not so good. Tuesday was probably really poor in terms of the way we went about the game, I think we’ve learnt a lot.
“We’ve learned that we’re going to have to adapt how we go on, we’ve brought new players into the club, we have little niggles, knocks and people missing so we haven’t had a game will full availability yet.
“We’ve got a lot of lessons we’ve learned but we’ve still got a long way to go, ultimately pre-season doesn’t count for anything so come 13th August and at five o’clock we’ve got three points on the board, no one will worry about pre-season too much.”
This weekend will be the final pre-season match for Warrington Rylands as they face Shildon. But following that friendly, the preparations for their season opener against Gainsborough Trinity will commence.
“It’s really important,” McNabb said on the final week of preparations. “We’ve got to put a line in the sand now, we can’t change what’s gone, we know there’s been some poor performances but there’s also been some really good performances and some positives to take.
“We’ve got the game Saturday, two training sessions next week to try make sure everything pulls together and the finishing touches together in terms of how we’re going to play Saturday before the big one against Gainsborough Trinity next week.
“It’s a massive, massive week we need everything to be positive, the lads to be flying and positive, up for it and hopefully everyone’s excited to get started.”
Podge has been a massive servant to the club, he’s been here since the very start he was one of the first players we brought in. The numbers and what he’s achieved apart of the club is unbelievable, without doubt he’s Rylands’ most successful players ever. It’s tough, it was tough for that relationship to come to an end, he was a close friend as well but he’s got his own business to look after, a baby on the way so a lot of things are happening in his personal life. As with anything in football, it carries on moving forward at pace so really sad to him go and I’m really going to miss seeing him around the place, a massive, massive player of the last four years.
With a number of additions to their side, they also waved goodbye to defender Rick Smith who signed for Radcliffe Borough for an undisclosed fee.
And McNabb has revealed more are expected through the door at Gorsey Lane.
Rick, again, came in and was influential in the Vase win, at the end of last season he was excellent on the pitch, really good, helped us to promotion. But Rick decided he wants to leave the club so we made Rick available and we received a fee (that) we thought was worthy of his ability so we accepted that bid and Rick’s moved on.
No I still think there will be two more new faces to come in before the season starts. I think we need a couple of players in a couple of key areas, they’re pretty much all agreed now so it’s basically getting the paperwork sorted and getting them sorted. We’ve got another attacking option going in and another player coming who can play at the back or in midfield as well.
[Featured image: Warrington Rylands – Mark Percy]
