Following the stunning successes of last season when the first team won the Lancashire FA Amateur Cup, the LAL Premier Division Championship and the LAL 1st XI Cup, this season has been a massive disappointment.
We started the season with two teams and with a new management structure for the reserves in the hope that we could aspire to the level achieved last season. This soon became a forlorn hope as we had problems with player availability for both teams and have hardly ever had close to the first team squad we had last year.
This has been compounded through the season by resignations of the first team manager just after the New Year and his replacement about a month later. The second team manager also resigned (twice), the second time preceding by a week or two resulting in a club decision to resign the reserves from the league after we were unable to field a team.
The situation with player availability has been problematic all season for a variety of reasons, many unavoidable but not all, and we have been faced with the first team having a bare 11 players for several matches.
Needless to say results have been very patchy and we have finished the season 11th in the league but successfully avoided a relegation position, an achievement in the context of the overall season and a credit to those players who have been involved.
A further blow was our exit from the Lancashire FA Amateur Cup at the hands of the team we thrashed in the final last year.
And now, because we no longer have a reserve side, the LAL rules dictate that we will be relegated to Division 1 despite our finishing league position.
To finish, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have seen the club through the season either as players or taking on the responsibility of running/managing the teams. Also many thanks to anybody else who has played any part in supporting the football section and especially Helen Hinchliffe for feeding the players all season.
Without people willing to help out and take on tasks we cannot possibly continue to operate.
John Haslam
Chairman Prestwich FC
