Kader FC Men’s First Team manager, Steve Simpkin, reflects on the season
It would be disingenuous of me to say we are anything other than disappointed in the season as a whole. The league table doesn’t lie and a mid-table finish is lower than we’d hoped coming into the season.
That said we were unfortunate in the summer with a couple of key signings picking up season long injuries and another couple taking jobs that had them unavailable for 90% of games. So, we entered the season with a slimmer squad than we’d wanted and that’s certainly been a factor throughout. I’ve said before most teams in this division go from week-2-week not sure if they’ll have 18 or 8 available, but at times this year we were working with a squad of 13/14 and were going to games with 1 sub and sometimes none. It’s a factor in any game where you can’t bring on some fresh legs or make a tactical switch as you simply don’t have any subs to use!
However, you still can’t get away from the fact we’ve not performed as well as we should have, there were just too many games where we dropped points from positions we shouldn’t have done. Opening game of the season we’ve been in a good position at 1-1 with Lealholm who went down to 10 men and we lose the game 2-1. 2-0 up at home to Boro Rangers 23s finished 2-2, 1-1 at Fishburn we concede in the 92nd minute to lose, 2-1 loss at Staithes again against 10 men, 2-0 up at St Marys finishing 2-2 and then 3-1 up with 10 minutes to play against both TIBS and Stokesley, both games ending in draws. Frankly, you can’t expect to be up near the top of the division when you can’t convert those games into wins.
On a positive though, when I sit here looking through the fixtures, I can only pick a couple of games where we’ve been well beaten, most have been by the odd goal and we’ve been in the game. This tells me we’re not a million miles away from where we need to be. Yes a 25 point swing looks like a sizeable ask, but we know where we need to strengthen, and I genuinely think we can push on and improve massively for 2025/26 which promises to be an exciting season.
The leadership of the club would like to see us pushing for promotion to the Northern League and there is certainly a great foundation in place to support that. They know what’s required to bring the ground up to Step 6 standard and the hope and expectation is that we can put the team in a position to challenge for promotion.
I’m sure they’ll be lots of naysayers out there and plenty of people with opinions that the club won’t achieve it’s aim, something I’m sure Boro Rangers, Redcar Town and Grangetown all had to deal with when they first stated an ambition to progress. We won’t be worrying about the negative opinions, what I see is a club with so much potential, the facilities are superb and there is an amazing junior section full of youngsters who wear their Kader shirts proudly and for my part I’ll do all I can to put a team on the field that can help the club achieve their aim and that those junior players want to come along and support and call their own.
This was one of the key reasons myself and the coaching team chose to take up the job here, having ran a Reserves team for 5 seasons at Redcar Athletic I know how difficult it is to attract and retain players who have ambition to play higher, you are constantly moving players on to other clubs or ‘losing’ your best individuals to the 1st team. It’s a tough sell and a tough job keeping players engaged when they see no clear steps up the ladder. So for us to be part of a set-up which has the ambition and capability of promotion was a big draw for us and hopefully, we are an attractive prospect for players who are looking for that progression and we will be seeing/hearing from them during pre-season.
To close out, a personal thank you to the club for making us so welcome this season and backing us to do the job. To the rest of my coaching team and the players, thank you for all your efforts and for putting up with me shouting and ranting. Bring on 2025/26!