The past week has seen Daisy Hill FC feature in both local and national media, following the appointment of social media creator Aaron Hunt as chairman of the club.
The news has brought unprecedented attention and interest in the Cutters from far and wide, but amid the raising of the club’s profile, Daisy’s assistant manager, Jack Iley, insists the management team is focusing on playing matters.
“The attention is new for everyone really”, said Iley.
“It’s not something I’ve ever been involved in, and I imagine the players haven’t, so we just have to take it all as it comes.
“The manager, Lee Hill, and myself have spoken about it, and we both feel we work well under pressure, and when there are going to be more eyes on the club, there is going to be more pressure in terms of results.
“But we don’t want anything that is happening off the pitch to distract us from what is happening on the pitch, so that is the challenge we have as a management team, to keep everyone’s feet on the ground while it’s all going on.”
Daisy had no game on Saturday, but after a good performance at Maine Road the previous weekend, Iley says they are keen to keep the momentum going.
“Looking back at last Saturday against Maine Road, there were positives to take from the performance, although there was a lot of frustration after the game,” he added.
“But hopefully we can build on the positives and take those with us into the next few games. We got the lads in on Saturday morning for a session, and did some work with them, but we also gave them as much of Saturday off as we could, as we haven’t had many blank Saturday afternoons this season.
“We will do some analysis before the next game against Atherton LR on Friday evening, and the Saturday session formed part of the preparation.”
Looking ahead to the remaining league games, Iley says there is plenty to play for despite Daisy’s mid-table position in the North West Counties League First Division North.
He said: “We still have a chance of equalling our previous best points total in recent years, although it will be a challenge, but we feel we have a squad that is capable of doing that.
“We have to play the top three sides in the league in the last eight games, so there are some tough games ahead for us.
“But these are the types of teams we want to challenge ourselves against.
“If we can come out of a couple of the games with some positive results, there’s no reason why we can’t push towards that total.
“We will probably have a big say in where the teams at the top finish because of who we have to play, which is exciting in itself and we will go into every game looking to pick up maximum points.
“But these remaining games are also about looking ahead to next season to get a yardstick on how our squad has progressed from the start of the season, and how we are looking for next season. It’s a bit of a dress rehearsal for the squad that we have got.
“There’s plenty for us to have a go at. Sometimes you can get towards the end of the season and games cam feel slightly irrelevant, but we will be going into each game 100 per cent and looking to get as many points as possible to finish as high up the table as we can.
“At the moment there are only three points separating the teams in 13th and eighth place so in terms of targets, we see ourselves in a bit of a mini league and we want to finish top that league if we can.
“The game against Atherton LR on Friday s a good one to start our run in.
“They lost last Saturday but we know how well they have been playing this season, and we know they have got a really good side together there.
“It’s a challenge that we want to rise to, it’s a local derby and there would have been a good crowd on anyway, irrespective of all the other things that have been going on around the club in this past week.
“We probably also need to show a bit of fight considering the result of the last game against them (a 6-0 defeat in September), when we didn’t deliver a performance that we want to associate with a Daisy Hill performance, and we need to redeem ourselves for that.”
