AFC Totton
AFC TOTTON vs SOUTHAMPTON XI
Pre-Season Friendly#3 | Snows Stadium, Salisbury Road, Totton, Southampton SO40 2RW | Saturday 13 July 2024 | Kick-Off at 3:00pm.
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AFC TOTTON’S PRE-SEASON campaign continues this Saturday afternoon when Jimmy Ball’s men host a Southampton XI at the Snows Stadium in The Stags’ first home friendly of the summer.
Newly-appointed U21s Head Coach Simon Rusk will lead a young Southampton side who’ll be launching their own pre-season programme with a match at their home-away-from-home, where many of the players have represented The Saints’ U21s throughout the last couple of seasons.
Southampton First Team Manager Russell Martin – who successfully steered his side back to the Premier League big time via the Championship Promotion Play-Off Final with a 1-0 victory over Leeds United at Wembley Stadium in May – will be in attendance together with members of his backroom staff, to run the rule over young hopefuls aiming to catch the boss’s eye and win a place in the senior team’s pre-season squad.
The Stags began pre-season last weekend with a 4-0 win at Didcot Town. All the goals came in the first half, with perennial top-scorer Scott Rendell doing what he does best to put last season’s Southern League Premier Division South Runners-Up ahead after just four minutes. Adam Tomasso, Tony Lee and new signing Joshua Owers completed the rout, before a raft of half-time changes from both teams led to a more tightly-contested second period.
On Tuesday evening, Wessex League Premier Division Runners-Up AFC Stoneham produced an impressive display on the 3G surface at the Hampshire FA’s Stoneham Football Complex to defeat Totton 5-2, with Rendell and Lee both on target again for The Stags.
Saturday’s match on the freshly resurfaced Snows Stadium turf provides a first opportunity for home fans to get a good long look at new signings Declan Rose, Harvey Rew, Joshua Owers, Marcus Daws and Tom Blair. In addition, a handful of trialists have recently been training with the club and featured in midweek at Stoneham – so, there may be several as yet unfamiliar faces donning the Totton blue at the weekend.
The match will also provide an inaugural outing for AFC Totton’s new home kit for the 2024/25 season, with The Stags having made use of last season’s strips in their other two pre-season friendlies to date.
Arrangements for more potential pre-season friendlies are still at the negotiation stage at the time of writing but as the schedule currently stands, the next game after the visit of Southampton will be against Aldershot Town on Saturday 27 July. The Shots, who finished eighth in the National League last term, have been frequent flyers at the Snows Stadium in recent years; the two sides contested a 2-2 draw in July 2002, then Aldershot ran-out 3-0 winners, despite a goalless first half, in last summer’s friendly encounter.
National League South outfit Eastbourne Borough will visit the Snows Stadium on Tuesday 30 July, for an evening match that will kick-off at 7:30pm. There will also be a friendly between the new AFC Totton U23s team and next-door neighbours Totton & Eling, with the highly-coveted Linden Cup up for grabs, on a date still to be confirmed.
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By Ben Rochey-Adams
Photography courtesy of Tom McKenzie
