NEWCASTLE TOWN AWAY TO EVESHAM IN FA CUP ON SATURDAY

Yep, three months after the season closed with a drab 2-1 defeat at home to Chasetown, a new season gets underway full of optimism, as it will do for every club playing this weekend around the country.

Here at Newcastle, sensible souls that we are, we’re keeping our feet firmly on the ground and will be perfectly content with winning the league by 15 points and getting to the third round of the cup before being edged out in a 3-2 thriller in-front of 70,000 fans at Old Trafford against a nervous Manchester United.

Well, a bit of dreaming never hurt anyone eh? We would need to get through a mere eight rounds of the FA Cup to make the third round, so granted it’s a tough ask and we get underway in the competition this Saturday with a trip to Southern League Division One South Evesham United.

Once again, we enter the FA Cup at the extra preliminary qualifying round, which means that our opening game of the season is in the country’s premier cup competition. It’s not ideal but that’s where we are.

And there’s a little bit of cup history between the sides. Head-to-heads between ourselves and Evesham are rare, but we did face off twice in the cup back in August 2017. We were drawn at home to our Worcestershire opponents initially back then and were held to a 1-1 draw.

In the replay, we were owed a huge debt of gratitude to our goalkeeper at the time Raavam Gill, who pulled off a few blinders to keep us in the game. And with the game locked at 2-2 going into extra time, a young Ollie Ritchie – anyone know what he’s up these days? – set up a dramatic late winner.

Last year’s player’s player of the season Ollie is the only consistent between the match day squad back then and the one we’ll be taking on Saturday, so we’ll be hoping that the positive memories he’ll have from seven years ago can be revisited at The Spiers & Hartwell Stadium this weekend.

The seven pre-season games we completed with the home game against Stoke City’s U-21s on Sunday have been much needed in terms of preparation but now it’s down to business.