“IT MIGHT be a pivotal month in our season.”
That is the feeling of Binfield boss Roger Herridge as his side look to continue their march up the Hellenic Premier Division in the coming weeks.
It has been a mixed campaign so far for the Moles, but they got their league campaign back on track with a 2-0 win at Lydney Town on Saturday, despite a nightmare four-hour journey due to an accident on the M4.
The three points lifted Binfield up to 12th in the table, but they still have games in hand on every other side in the division with as many as five on some of the leading teams.
This Saturday sees a return to cup action, away at Thornbury Town in the Hellenic League Challenge Cup (3pm), before a run of four league games in 10 days with opponents including Brimscombe and Thrupp, Wantage Town and Brackley Town Saints, who all currently sit in the top four.
And Herridge says those games will shape what Binfield’s targets look like for the remainder of the campaign.
“You win two or three games on the trot and you find yourself climbing up the table and you’re getting some momentum,” the Moles manager told The Wokingham Paper.
“We know where we want to be and we’ve still got every chance of being there.
“Everyone is beating each other.
“It’s frustrating because it would be nice to get some momentum and play twice a week. We’ve had no midweek game this week, we play Saturday with a long trip again to Thornbury Town, then no midweek again next week.
“Then we’re at home to Longlevens, then the Wednesday night we’ve been given Brackley Town away and then we go to Brimscombe away on the Saturday. So it might be a pivotal month in our season in terms of the league because if you go to Brackley and win and you go to Brimscombe and win, then you’ve beaten two sides that in my opinion are going to be in that top five or six.
“You go there and lose those games and all of a sudden you start feeling a bit different about yourselves.
“Without putting any pressure on us, it’s potentially a pivotal month in terms of what our aspirations are.”
The Moles do at least go into that tricky run of games with another win under their belts thanks to a 2-0 success at Lydney with second-half goals from Ian Davies and Josh Howell.
Kick-off was delayed until 4.15pm due to the problems on the roads between Berkshire and Gloucestershire and Herridge admits he was concerned at how his players would react to the disrupted journey.
“It was a very, very long trip,” he said.
“I know how my legs felt being stuck in the car for nearly four hours, God knows what the players were feeling, mentally as well because you’re thinking the ref is bound to abandon the game.
“Obviously thoughts to the people that were involved in the accident, but it was a nightmare journey. It was one of those trips where you were thinking, am I ever going to get there?
“But obviously we got there, it was a late kick-off and it wasn’t great for us and I’m sure it probably wasn’t great for them either.”
He continued: “When we got there the weather was horrific. All the signs weren’t good.
“The first half was probably about as bad as you can ever want to see a game of football.
“We were in control in the second half and looked really, really comfortable, albeit at 1-0 you’re always way that they might nick one.
“But we got the penalty near the end and it was a great win.”
Given the elongated trip on Saturday, Herridge is likely to rotate his squad for this weekend’s trip back west to face Thornbury, who compete at a step below Binfield.
“I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t have the heart to tell the players in the dressing room we’ve got to come all the way back down here next week,” he said.
“We’ll certainly be making some changes.
“We might give a few of them that travelled last week a Saturday off because I think if I go on that motorway again and we have a similar trip, it won’t be a pleasant afternoon.”
He added: “It’s a potential banana skin.
“We’ll plan for them like we plan for playing a team in our own league.
“We’ll go down there and expect a hard game, but we’ll expect to go down there and win.”
