It’s been a busy summer for the football section with a flurry of activity mainly with regards to the reserve team.
Last years title winning reserve team manager Robbie Monetti has decided to hang up his managers coat to concentrate on playing for the club which meant a position came available for his replacement.
Liam Morrissey decided to join us from our Manchester League neighbours Prestwich Heys where he has been first team manager as well as a number of successful years as manager of their reserve team, often assisted by our now first team centre-half Paul Taylor.
Alongside Liam this year will be Brian Clegg as his assistant while Graham Phillips comes in as physio.
A number of new players have also come to the club with Liam and we welcome them to Prestwich FC.
This influx of new places caused a bit of an overcrowding issue with some 30 names available for reserve team duty.
So rather than loose any of the players to other clubs, we quickly set up and had accepted in to the league a third team (known as an A team in football circles).
Peter Lorenzini has agreed to manage the A team (as well as carrying on with his Sunday team management committments) who will play at the pitch originally booked for use of the reserves – Our Lady’s Sports Centre in Blackley.
This means that the reserves will now be playing on alternating Saturdays with the first team at Heys Road so once the league season has started in a few weeks time, there will be football to watch nearly every Saturday afternoon down at Heys Road.
With regards to the first team, they will be playing in Division One of the Lancashire Amateur League this coming season following their title success last time out.
Manager Lee Metcalfe has welcomed a few new faces of his own to the club with Darren Buckley, Lee Bushell, Danny Smith and ‘keeper Scott Gibbon coming in to the team along with welcome returns of Curtis Ward and Mark Moir from Radcliffe Town.
The team is really looking the part at times and hopefully then can have another successful season and gain promotion to the Premier Division at the first time of asking.
I would be a massive achievement for the club to gain back-to-back promotions after only starting up the Saturday teams this time last year.
And with the calibre of players and staff we’ve been able to attract, it just shows that people recognise the superb facilities that we have here at Prestwich and that’s credit to all the hard work that goes on by everybody from all the sections that we have a fantastic club to be rightly proud of.
On the field, the first team have already started competitive action in the Kenyon Cup group stages. Following a 6-1 success over Hargreaves a couple of weeks back, the team travelled down the road to Prestwich Heys for our first ever meaningful meeting and to come away with a 2-2 draw was a good result.
Their final group game at Little Lever yesterday brought a 3-0 success which sees the team win their group ahead of the quarter-finals in a couple of weeks time.
Finally the junior section has blossomed and gone from three teams last year to 8 for the coming season.
There are some talented young players in the club and it would be a special achievement to one day see them lads progress all the way up to the first team.
