Williams hopes to keep his Ducks together

Ben Williams would love nothing more than to keep his Aylesbury United squad together for next season.

With the Pitching In Southern League Division One Central campaign ending early for the second year in a row due to the Covid-19 pandemic, clubs have little choice but to look ahead for everyone hopes will be a return to normality in the summer.

The government’s ‘roadmap’ to bring the country out of lockdown remains on course and, coupled with the vaccination programme, it has raised hopes that the football season will kick-off as scheduled in August.

The Southern League have confirmed the 2021/22 season will start on Saturday, August 14 while the FA Cup will get under way a week earlier with the extra preliminary round.

Despite only playing seven league matches, Aylesbury did make an encouraging start to the 2020/21 campaign and were sitting in fourth place when matches were halted.

They also enjoyed runs in early stages of both the FA Cup and FA Trophy.

And Williams is now hoping he can convince the squad that started last season to stay together for the next campaign.

Looking ahead to pre-season, Williams said: “We will start up again on July 1. That gives us a bit of time to play some golf between now and then!

“Firstly, I have still got to keep my job for next season which I hope will be the case.

“But providing I am still in charge, I would be more than happy to get the same squad back and I would prefer to get that done sooner rather than later and not have to go through the rigmarole of chasing players around.

“We had quite a lot of injuries in the short space of time that the season was happening so if we could get those boys back as well then I would be really happy.

“It would be good to keep the band together for the next season.”

The decision to curtail the 2020/21 season at Steps 3 to 6 was ratified by the FA Council at the end of last week.