Hednesford Town travel to the league’s form team AFC Rushden & Diamonds on Saturday afternoon hoping to get back on track after Tuesday’s narrow 1-0 defeat at Stratford Town.
This is going to be an extremely tough game for the Pitmen as Rushden have put themselves in a great position to take the final play-off spot after embarking on an excellent run of results. Rushden are 5th in the league, with at least two games in hand on nearest play-off rivals Alvechurch and Royston, and seven points ahead of Leiston. Rushden are second in the form table. They have won seven of their last nine games with their only two defeats in this time coming in away games at the top two, Banbury and Rushall.
This will be Rushden’s first game for two weeks after the weather ruined the programme last weekend, and since then they have lost manager Andy Peaks who has left to take over at divisional rivals Tamworth. Peaks had been the manager for eight years and had great success with the club. It was announced yesterday that playing legend Andy Burgess has been appointed as interim manager. Burgess is well known to the Rushden fans and Non-League fans in general as he made 333 appearances for the old Rushden & Diamonds club and played against Hednesford a number of times during that period. It will certainly be interesting to see how the players manage the loss of their manager and how they react to a new man coming in, and it will be up to the Pitmen to take advantage of that if at all possible.
The game at Keys Park earlier in the season was dramatic to say the least. In front of a crowd of 581, the Pitmen took a two goal lead with a first half goal from Todd Parker and a second half goal from Andre Brown. Just as it looked as though the Pitmen would coast to a comfortable home victory, Rushden turned it around in dramatic style, scoring three goals in the last six minutes plus injury time through Ryan Hughes, Ravi Shamsi, and the winner was scored by William Jones in the fourth minute of injury time.
Despite their lofty position in the league table AFC Rushden & Diamonds are 13th in terms of goals scored but are 4th on goals conceded. Their two highest scorers are Ty Deacon with nine goals, who was signed from Aylesbury United at the beginning of November, and Nathan Tshikuna with eight goals, who was signed last summer. This will be an intriguing battle as the home side look to start to overcome the shock loss of their manager and the Pitmen will be looking to start another unbeaten run in what will be their fourth consecutive away league game.

Tickets; https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/afcrd/

Hayden Road
Rushden
Northamptonshire
NN10 0HX