harriers-online fa cup 2nd rd preview
5th December 2003 
HOME
Woking FC
At Kingfield
Saturday
6/12/03 3:00pm
It's been a few years now since we've been to deepest stockbroker suburbia to play our old friends from Surrey.  Woking was always a pleasant place to visit, apart from the Outer London orbital carpark that is.

It's well known, and written down in folklore, that Woking was the place that, in 2000, we finally clinched promotion to the Football League and glory.  Well it should have been but we've hardly set the League on fire have we?

We have had many battles together, twice in the FA Cup when the first time in 90/91 they took us to a replay before winning the chance for a crack at WBA and then Everton where they finally made their exit from the competition for the time being.

They met us in the Cup again in 1993 where this time we gained our revenge and went on a little cup run of our own and beat the Blues (Birmingham not Chelsea, for our Woking friends) and Preston before finally going out to a dodgy goal from West Ham's Lee Chapman.

Our next major meeting was at Wembley for the 1995 Trophy Final where they won 2-1 with goals from Steele and Fielder and Paul Davies got the goal for us.  It wasn't a great game and Woking deserved their win, a draw would have been fairer though!!

Druceless Apart from another good Cup run for Woking in 1996/97 we both then tootled along in the Conference until that magical year of 2000.

As a leaving present we gave them the legendary Mark Druce (right).

Since our promotion Woking have struggled to regain their former powers but slowly the corner has been turned and they're climbing the table to look a good outside bet for one of the promotion places.

Since the draw for this round was made at the beginning of November they've won four games from five, the only points being dropped in a 0-0 thriller at home to Dagenham.  This turn round in form has mainly been down to the shrewd signings of manager Glenn Cockerill, his best one being the signing of top scorer Chris Sharpling from Crystal palace for £60,000.  The loan signing of goalkeeper, Scott Bevan, from Southampton has also helped in making the Woking defence water tight.


As for us, we seem to all be looking forward to this game because of the renewal of old friendships etc.  It'll also be interesting to see our old half shirts that they pinched off us too.

We'll be at full strength for this game with no new faces to show for Jan's efforts of trying to bring some in.  In fact the side will be considerably weakened after losing Lee Ayres to Tamworth and Matt Lewis to Hinckley earlier this week.

We're now down to a squad of just eighteen players available for this game with two more out on loan.  Adam Willis at Burton and Nick Heath at Cinderford.  Not a brilliant state of affairs with the heavier ground conditions coming up.

Luckily we have no injury problems to speak of so I expect Jan to start with the same side that started the game at Boston last week.  I also hope that the defence have learned their lesson after letting a two goal lead slip.

I think this is going to be one hell of a tough game and I'm not that confident that we'll be in the hat for the next round.  If we are then we'll draw someone like Accrington or Weston SM.  Typical!!

Teams

Harriers from:
Brock, Danby, Stamps, Gadsby, Hatswell, Burton, Coleman, A Smith, Hinton, D Williams, Parrish, Bennett, Betts, Ward, Shilton, Henriksen, White, J Williams.

Woking from:
Bayes, Northmore, Bevan, Ajoge, Canham, Foyewa, Parsons, McNab, Boardman, L Cockerill, Campbell, MacDonald, Selley, Nade, Clark, Ferguson, Haule, Sharpling, Townsend, Proctor, Sharp, N Smith.
Previous games against Woking  (in league)
Harriers score first
Home
Away
2002 - 03
None
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2001 - 02
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2000 - 01
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