Dorchester trip for Blues
BLUES will look to bounce back from Monday’s 4-2 loss at Royston when they travel to Dorchester Town, on Saturday.
The Dorset side are three points behind Kevin Watson’s team with 42 points from 39 games, and would need a 5-0 win against Stortford to move above them in the Evo-Stik South Premier table.
When the sides met at the ProKit UK Stadium just before Christmas, Darren Foxley’s 83rd minute winner gave Stortford a deserved 1-0 win.
Dorchester have had some big home wins, including a 6-0 hammering of St Ives Town and a 7-2 victory against Gosport Borough, and have also beaten high-flying Kettering Town 4-1 but have conceded at least four goals on six occasions.
Like Blues, the Magpies’ FA Cup campaign ended after 90 minutes, going down 1-0 at AFC Porchester while the FA Trophy saw them defeat Basingstoke in a replay before a loss against Heybridge Swifts.
It will be the first meeting of the season between the two sides, but the clubs met regularly in Conference South during the first decade of the competition before Town were relegated in 2014.
Blues took four points off the Hampshire side when they met in the 2013/14 campaign, Michael Richens salvaging a late point at the ProKit while in the away game Stortford overcame the shock of conceding a goal in the first minute as excellent strikes by Matt Johnson, Nicky Symons and George Sykes gave them a 3-1 win on the road.
The Magpies’ three years in the Southern League since their relegation have all seen bottom half finishes culminating in last season’s battle against the drop being a success by a single point. Helped by a bumper 2,033 crowd against rivals Weymouth, Dorchester’s attendances rose slightly to 420 last season before continuing to climb to 464 this year. .
