Season Preview
North West Counties Division One North
Golcar United
Ambitious Golcar United have armed themselves with an array of lethal Non League players in Ash Flynn, Leon Henry and Daniel Naidole and the progressive club are hoping to push for promotion.
Joint Managers
Ash and Gav Connor
The Connor brothers have overseen the extraordinary rise of Golcar United whose ground and team are unrecognisable when compared to a few years ago. Prior to managing Golcar, the pair began their dugout journey with Marsden.
Opening Five Fixtures
Holker Old Boys (a), Campion (a), Nelson (h), Steeton (a), Atherton LR (h).
Notable Movement
In: Ash Flynn (Liversedge), Leon Henry (Yorkshire Amateur), Gregg Porter, Graham McLachlan (Yorkshire Amateur), Oliver Willitts (Honley), Nick Crane.
One to Watch
Ash Flynn
Let’s be honest, it would be a major shock if the striker doesn’t score a lot of goals for Golcar this season.
Interview
Although Ash Flynn is set to start smashing the goals in, Golcar United joint manager Ash Connor wouldn’t regard his side as “favourites” for the NWCL Division One North title.
However, he does admit Golcar are chasing promotion and they have built a very competitive squad.
“We go into every season with the expectation that we want to finish as high as we can,” Connor told Non League Yorkshire.
“We have got a very good squad together. We have a good mixture of experience and younger lads.
“Mine and Gav’s expectations are to get promotion. We set that out ourselves and that never changes for whatever standard we’re playing at.
“I don’t think we’re favourites.
“There’s some very good teams in the league.
“There’s Bury for a start.
“They’ve come off the back of a full-time club and they have a very good following.
“There’s no easy games and we won our away games last season, but struggled at home.
“There’s teams who people don’t talk about like Nelson, Holker’s, Cleator Moor’s, all good and organised teams.
“I think we have assembled a very good squad, but I wouldn’t say we are favourites.”
Flynn is just one of the all-stars signed by Golcar this summer.
Yorkshire Amateur duo Leon Henry and Daniel Naidole are the other two stand-out signatures and Connor agrees that their signings have huge pedigrees.
“If we didn’t finish in the play-offs we would be disappointed from a personal point of view,” he said.
“Our aim for the last two seasons has been to get promoted.
“Our expectation hasn’t changed so anything less we’d be disappointed.
“We’ll see how we get on.
“The squad is more than capable of getting into the top five.
“The players we have brought in are not just good experienced players, they have won things as well.
“That makes a massive difference in our dressing room.
“All the signings we have made are all great signings
“Flynny is a great lad and he trained with a few weeks before signing.
“If we can get Ash firing like he has done over the years it will be absolutely brilliant for us.
“I’ve been speaking to Dan Naidole for a couple of seasons trying to get him to the club.
“He’s won things higher than this standard at Brighouse Town.
“Leon has had a very good Non League career as has Frankie (Graham McLachlan).
“Gregg Porter is a good player and experience and we have signed young Oliver Willitts from District football and he’s been brilliant in pre-season, but unfortunately he got an injury on Saturday that will probably keep him out for the start of the season.”
Golcar begin the new campaign with the trip to Holker Old Boys on Saturday and Connor says his side have had a solid pre-season.
“We’ve had a pretty good pre-season,” he said.
“Myself and Gav had to isolate for ten days, but we have a good coaching team who carried on the pre-season preparations.
“In terms of pre-season games we have had a good one.
“All the teams we have played have been a higher standard and we’ve given a good account of ourselves.”
Prediction
Promotion Candidates
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams.
Our work is playing an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
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