JAMES ANDERSON is confident Woodley United have the quality to compete with runaway Hellenic Premier Division leaders Highworth Town on Saturday.
The Kestrels are struggling for form with their 1-0 defeat against Fairford Town on Saturday extending their winless league run to seven matches.
By contrast, Highworth are enjoying a memorable season, winning 17 of their 20 league games and sitting 10 points clear of nearest challenges Thatcham Town.
However, having picked up points against Thatcham and fellow promotion hopefuls Flackwell Heath already this season, coupled with the fact Highworth have drawn two of their last three games, Anderson insists Woodley do have a chance of causing a major shock on Saturday.
“In many ways, games like Highworth and the teams at the top of the table are a bit of a free hit for us,” he told The Wokingham Paper.
“We can go there with no pressure on us. Nobody is expecting us to get anything out of the game.
“But we know that on our day, we can turn in a really good performance. We beat Beaconsfield from the league above in the cup on penalties, perhaps should have won it in normal time, and played really well.
“So we know we can match the best on our day.
“It’s just a matter of going there, everyone turning out a performance and getting a bit of a rub of the green.”
He added: “I know that the quality is there in the team and the squad. We’ve got some really good players.
“It’s just finding that consistency, being able to do it for 90 minutes rather than just 45 or 50 minutes.
“I think if you look at the last few games, quite often it’s been 0-0 at half-time and then we’ve come away with a defeat.
“That’s just concentration, that’s just players keeping that performance up for the whole game.
“We’re getting there and I certainly have got enough confidence in the players to know that they can do it over 90 minutes, it’s just a case of doing it.”
Woodley travel west to face the Worthians having missed the opportunity to pull away from the relegation zone after home defeats to fellow strugglers Fairford and Burnham over recent weeks.
Despite that, the Kestrels sit 16th in the table on 17 points over halfway through the campaign in their first ever top flight season.
“That’s the positive spin of it,” said Anderson.
“We were fortunate enough to have built up a little bit of a cushion so that when these results haven’t quite gone our way, we’re still higher in the table than perhaps we expected.
“I do think that anyone who’s been down to our games will see that the performances have actually been really good on the whole.
“We’ve played some nice stuff. It’s just those fine margins and sometimes it doesn’t quite fall your way and you come away with a defeat wondering how the hell that’s happened.
“But we’ll certainly keep plugging away. 30 points is our target. We’re on 17 with plenty of games to go.
“A few more wins would help and we still think we’ll get that target.”
