Sidmouth Town entertain Galmpton United on Saturday (January 23) and the visitors are arguably the form team in the South West Peninsula League, Eastern Division, writes Steve Birley.

ince Tony Bowker took over the reins of the South Devon club in early December they have won every game that they have played.

Town boss Josh Stunell says: “Tony (Bowker) is old school in football terms and certainly plays to win. He’s been in the game some time and so is able to quickly build teams of experience and power. It will be a challenge for us, but equally a challenge that I feel we need not shy away from.”

Stunell continued: “The only thing currently holding us back as a team is - ourselves! Some folk may find that a strange comment, but it is one I believe as we showed last Saturday at Appledore, when for two thirds of the contest we were an easy second best and yet for the final third we were comfortably the best team on the pitch.

“The issue is one of belief and if the team believed in themselves to the same degree that I believe in them then we’d be a lot higher in the table!”

Stunell has a number of players missing for the game with Galmpton, but plans to use that as a motivating factor.

He says: “OK, we have six missing, but that means that the six who come in are, hopefully, on a mission to make sure that, by the end of the 90 minutes, they have done enough to convince me that they must keep the shirt.

“I’d like nothing more than to have the missing six this week all on the bench for the next game simply because those that took on the shirts against Galmpton earned the right to keep them on next time out. Players, over to you.”