New Wick joint boss: Promotion is a must this season

The Crabtree Park club have received an injection of fresh blood during the close season with David Phillips joining the board as chairman as they bid to win the Southern Combination division one.

Wick concluded a successful pre-season with a deserved 2-1 victory over Newhaven, who play in the level above their hosts and Simmonds, joint boss with Lee Baldwin, said: "Four teams are promoted this year and our main objective is to finish in that bracket.

"Promotion is actually our minimum expectation as we have brought in players who have played in leagues above this one and they have bought into the whole project with the new committee here.

"The club is improving leaps and bounds off the pitch and we fully intend to do the same on it. We picked tough teams to play against in our friendlies and I fully expect Newhaven to do really well this year so beating them in the style we did, playing attractive, attacking football was exceptional.

"The result was brilliant but friendlies are all about the performance and for 80 minutes I thought we were superb. It's very encouraging."

Simmonds and Baldwin want a fast start to the campaign, which starts with the visit of Bexhill on Saturday before Wick head to Billingshurst, beaten 7-0 by Newhaven in their previous friendly outing.

Simmonds added: 'I expect Bexhill to be very good this season as they were going very strongly before everything came to a halt. I've seen the signings they have made and have been very impressed so I expect a tough match. It will be a good gauge of where we are at the moment as I firmly believe that if you finish above Bexhill you will go up.

'We then travel to Billingshurst and they struggled a little bit last season and didn't fare well against Newhaven so hopefully we can assert our authority and make it a fast start.'