Season Preview
Toolstation NCEL Division One
North Ferriby
The league giants are desperate to start moving back up the pyramid. Along with Hallam they are the favourites for the title.
Manager
Chris Bolder
The former Ferriby midfielder and manager returned to manage the reformed club in 2019. Bolder enjoyed a successful playing career with Ferriby, Guiseley and Scarborough Athletic before moving into management with the original Ferriby in 2017.
Opening Five Fixtures
Shirebrook Town (a), Whitley Bay – FA Cup (a), Selby Town – League Cup (h), Rossington Main (a), Brigg Town (h)
Notable Movement
In: Matty Plummer (Barton Town), Danny Clarke.
One to Watch
Jamie Forrester
The midfielder is a fantastic playmaker and he chips with spectacular goals on a regular basis.
Interview
Chris Bolder is urging his North Ferriby players to race out of the blocks.
With only automatic promotion place available in the Division One table, there’s little room for bad form.
Bolder hopes his men can set the tone from the off.
“(One automatic promotion spot) makes it really challenging and reduces the margin of error,” Bolder told Non League Yorkshire.
“Basically you can’t afford many slip-ups at all because you will always get other teams in the league who are flying at certain points.
“It makes it really tough and they’ll be several teams eyeing up that automatic promotion up.
“It is vital we have a fast start, especially with only one going up.
“It is absolutely essential that we get off to a strong consistent winning start.
“Because of the margin of error the last thing you want to do is start off on the back-foot.
“Saying that, the opening games aren’t going to define your season.”
Ferriby and Hallam are the two sides widely talked about as title favourites and Bolder believes keeping nearly all of last season’s squad is important.
“I think our expectations are the same as it has at the start of the last two seasons,” he said.
“Our ambitions are to get out of it.
“Now there’s no team regardless of history or facilities has any right to win any game of football.
“We know there’ll be some strong squads and there’s always a couple of surprise packages.
“We have managed to keep last season’s squad together and add a couple of players.
“On that basis we’re hopeful we’ll be looking to achieve our aim of getting out of this Division.
“Having the same squad massively helps.
“You go through history and successful teams have managed to keep hold of the same core of 13/14 players.”
With restrictions on capacity limited, Ferriby are set to be backed by substantial numbers and Bolder is delighted that his club’s supporters will return in their droves.
“We’ve said this before that we have a fantastic following at Ferriby,” he said.
“The fans are brilliant and they really respect what the lads are trying to do and to see them back at the ground is going to give everyone a huge lift.
“We’ve had a couple of pre-season friendlies where we managed to get a few supporters through the gate again and it just changes everything.
“The atmosphere, the mindset of everyone and it is great to see familiar faces and people enjoying Non League Football again.”
Ferriby kick off the season at Shirebrook Town tomorrow.
Prediction
Title Contenders
If you have enjoyed reading Non League Yorkshire over the past few months, please consider making a donation to the not-for-profit organisation NLY Community Sport which provides sport for children and adults with disabilities and learning difficulties. CLICK HERE to visit the JustGiving page. There is a video at the bottom of the page showing our work.
NLY Community Sport, run by James Grayson and Connor Rollinson, has always had combatting social isolation at the top of our objectives when running our Disability Football teams.
Our work is playing an important role in reintroducing our players, who have disabilities and learning difficulties, back into society.
We have six teams, a mixture of Junior and Adult teams – Nostell MW DFC, Pontefract Pirates, Selby Disability Football Club and the South Yorkshire Superheroes (Barnsley) – across Yorkshire.
We have enjoyed great success over the past three years. Several of our players have represented Mencap GB in Geneva, including Billy Hobson from Selby and Greg Smith, whose story is quite inspiring.
You can learn more about the organisation HERE and on our Facebook page.
Watch the video below to see highlights from our three years as an organisation. The video was produced for our players at the end of March to remind them of good memories from the last three years.