Tales from the Bell End

  As we’re now half way through our August matches it feels like a good time to reflect on our opening to the season; with one win, one draw, and one loss, we sit 14 th  in the table.  We have a huge game this afternoon with an in - form Farnborough  coming to York Road before a difficult double header on bank holiday weekend with an away trip to Chelmsford and a home game two days later against AFC Totton who are currently flying high in 5 th .  I didn’t make the Truro game but watched the highlights and was really worried by that performance and the return of the flappy JVS that appeared at the start of last season as well. I attended both Dorking at home and Hemel Hempstead away and whilst its obviously way too early in the season to make any  concrete opinions on the team here are my main takeaways  from August so far. One win, one draw, one loss We are clearly  still a work in progress, as Ryan Peters has said, pre-season was less than ideal ...

Truro (A) The season begins tomorrow for The Magpies with a tough away trip to Truro. The Tinners are coming off a really difficult debut season in the National League where they never really looked like staying up. They have a pretty stable squad and a very experienced manager in John Askey as they look to bounce back at the first time of asking. The dangerman for Truro is Tyler Harvey who scored 27 times as they won the National League South in the 2024/25 campaign, although he did struggle at the higher level last season. Ex-Magpies Zac Bell and Shaun Donnellan are likely to start in the Tinners defence and whilst we haven't played them in 9 years we are unbeaten in our last 9 games against them stretching back to 2010. I'd also like to take this opportunity to note that their mascot is a giant Chough, a rare bird only found in the UK in Cornwall, called Brian.... Brian Chough... which is excellent pun work and puts Yorkie the Magpie to shame.  Maidenhead will likely be play...