Now, three months on, both teams have improved and are both doing well. We're at eighth place in the League while our hosts sit in third spot having lost only one home game so far this season to AFC Wimbledon although they have dropped points in the last two home games.
This week saw a change of manager at Kettering with Mark Cooper joining Peterborough and taking veteran Nicky Eaden with him as his assistant while somewhat surprisingly another veteran, goalkeeper Lee Harper, was given the rôle of player manager until the end of the season. That is someway off so it looks like the Kettering board are hedging their bets and they could be seeing someone else in charge soon after Christmas if things don't go too well for Harper.
One of Coopers last actions before leaving for the Championship was to bring in two players with local connections to us. First he bought in a former Harrier in Simon Heslop (left) on loan from Barnsley and then last week James Dance arrived from Redditch Utd. Strange that Dance seemed to be a total unknown to us and bypassed our radar.
We'll be going into this game on the back of that stunning win at home to Oxford last Saturday and so we'll also be hoping to take that kind of form over to Northamptonshire. We'll have Chris McPhee back from suspension and it'll be interesting to see if he will walk straight back into the side.
Lee Baker is still out, this time for the third one of his three games ban, and Danny Andrew will again deputise. He did remarkably well against Oxford last week and looks to be a very good, left sided, prospect for Peterborough and it's just a pity that we cannot afford to keep him at Aggborough for longer than a month.
We have no real injuries and the only worries are to Dean Bennett after he seemed to suffer a slight back problem last week and to John Finnigan who missed the Oxford game with a slight groin strain.
It would be wrong to go to Kettering and think that just because we destroyed the League leaders last week that we only have to turn up to do the same to Kettering. This is going to be a very tough game and Kettering will not just sit back waiting to be rolled over.
I'm expecting a more defensively solid game and relying on breakaways to score. Don't be surprised if we return to Kidderminster empty handed.
Photo © BFC
Teams:
Harriers from:
Coleman, Singh, Andrew, Riley, Courtney, Sharpe, Farrell, Finnigan, Knights, Hadley, McDermott, McPhee, Bennett, Hayward, Caines, Costello, Barnes-Homer, Smikle, Dolman, Matthews.
Kettering from:
Bussey, Harper, Cooper, Jennings, Wrack, Roper, Dempster, Green, Fowler, Spencer, Marna, Carayol, Taylor, Dance, Noubissie, Heslop, Boucaud, Elding, Thomas, Geohaghon, Ashikodi.
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