Hednesford Town return to Keys Park to tomorrow afternoon when they welcome St Ives Town for the first time ever.
This is the third season in a row that Hednesford and St Ives have been in the Southern League Central Division and we have travelled to St Ives twice during that period. However, due to the pandemic curtailing the last two seasons St Ives have never managed to get to Keys Park as the fixtures were scheduled after the two seasons had been postponed.
We have an unbeaten record against our visitors as two goals from Chay Tilt and one each from Riley O’Sullivan and Shaquille Master saw the Pitmen recover from being a goal down and a penalty miss to win 4-2 earlier this season, after a 1-1 draw there in season 2019/20.
After the postponement of the Stourbridge home game on Tuesday evening, the Pitmen will be looking to extend their unbeaten record to seven games and put pressure on those above them in the league table.
St Ives Town are from Cambridgeshire and the town sits 12 miles to the north-west of Cambridge. The club spent 28 seasons in the Step 5 United Counties League from 1985 until 2014 and then secured two promotions in four seasons to reach this level.
The two teams are evenly matched at the moment but both securing ten points from their last six league games and are 6th and 8th respectively in the form table. St Ives are 14th in the league table but are only four points behind the Pitmen having played three games more. St Ives’ leading goalscorer is Nabil Shariff with nine goals, followed by Liam Cross, Dylan Williams and Ben Toseland with four goals each, but they have conceded more goals than any other team in the division with 72 goals, having conceded seven each in home matches against Peterborough and Royston and four or more in five other matches.
The Pitmen will be looking to take advantage of this and get back to winning ways in this eagerly anticipated Southern League Central Premier Division clash.