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Oxford City Match Preview
Oxford City are the visitors to the Corinium Stadium this coming Saturday 20th August with the game kicking off at 3.00pm
City are managed by Mike Ford the former Cardiff City and Oxford Utd left back and finished just two points behind Town in last seasons league table. The two teams met firstly in November last season with Cirencester Town winning 4-1 at home with goals from Marcus Palmer, Matt Sysum (2) and Jody Bevan. The return game at Court Place Farm in March this year saw a thrilling 3-3 draw with Rob Hoskin and Lyndon Tomkins (2) getting the Cirencester Town goals and the prolific Lee Steele grabbing two of the goals for City.
Steele is still part of the squad this year and the former professional who saw service with the likes of Shrewsbury Town, Brighton, Leyton Orient and Oxford Utd will form a formidable partnership with another ex football league player in Steve Basham.
Basham signed in the summer from neighbours Brackley Town having previously had a solid professional career playing for the likes of Southampton, Preston, Exeter City and most notably Oxford Utd where he played 168 times scoring 43 goals.
Another link to the professional game City have in their side for the game is goalkeeper Jason Mooney who is currently on loan from Wycombe Wanderers where he has recently signed a one year contract. An interesting point to note on the 22 year old Irish goalkeeper is that he may actually struggle to fit under the crossbar at the Corinium Stadium on Saturday as he 6ft 9" tall!
City started their season last Saturday with a 1-1 draw at home to recently relegated Blue Square Conference North outfit Redditch Utd with Steve Basham grabbing the goal. On Tuesday night they made the trip to Southampton based side AFC Totton and got comfortably beaten 6-0. However none of the management team or players at Cirencester Town will be reading anything into that result and will know they will face a tough game come 3.00pm on Saturday.
The Cirencester team have had a disappointing start with two defeats but when the fixtures were released Manager Brian Hughes always knew the first week would be a very tough one with St Albans coming down from the league above and Stourbridge being one of the fancied sides in the league this season.
Last seasons Players Player and Supporters Player of the Year Jody Bevan who has found form hard to come by in pre season unfortunately picked up an injury in Tuesday nights defeat to Stourbridge which could see him sidelined for at least 2-3 weeks. Also likely to miss the game this weekend will be defender Matt Sysum who was forced off at half time also in the Stourbridge game with a knee injury and again is thought likely to miss a couple of weeks.
One player who has showed up really well in the first two games is 18 year old striker Paul Banks who was man of the match against St Albans and also put in another tireless performance on Tuesday night. In both matches Banks was unlucky not to score inside the opening minute of the game with both respective goalkeepers producing fine saves to deny him so he will be looking to break that duck on Saturday and get off the mark.
With the two injuries already mentioned added to the one Ben Reardon picked up in pre season Cirencester Town have been in discussions with a number of football league clubs this week with a view to making a couple of loan signings but at the time of writing nothing as yet has been agreed and therefore at this late stage its unlikely any deals will be in place for the City game.
This entry was posted on 18 August 2011 at 13:15 and is filed under First Team. You can leave a response here.
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