Unfortunately, with a solid performance throughout the season, a few clubs came sniffing around my players. Callum Carpenter was snapped up after only one season with us, for £110k, and our young striker Patrick Sekyere went north of the border to Queen of the South for approximately £40k. Thankfully Paul Ryan returned for a third loan spell, and I was able to actually improve at centre-back, with the signing of Oisin McEntee on a free from Coventry City. He went onto the bumper contract of £900 p/w.

Our third season in the National League began with the general aim of making the playoffs again. Despite the transfer income, and a dream run to the FA Cup 3rd round the previous season (where we eventually lost to Arsenal), the board were not willing at any point to consider professional status. It was going to be a battle considering the majority of the league were able to bring in a better quality of player.

However, the season started very well. Our defence was rock solid, and while we weren't scoring a great deal, we were grinding out wins. We reached the turn of the year top of the league, with only 3 losses, but we had a number of games postponed at home, which was going to cause some fixture congestion through the 2nd half of the season. It turned out to not be a problem as we lost just 1 of our last 18 games of the season, finding our scoring boots in the process



Morecambe appeared to be our closest challenger through the winter, but as the season progressed, they dropped off the pace and it was Wrexham (they'd lost the Playoff Final to Crewe) who came from nowhere to put the pressure on. We travelled to play them with 5 games left of the season, at which point they hadn't conceded in 11 league games. I was 5 points clear having played a game more and we set up to park the bus. It paid off - we converted an early penalty to break their clean sheet streak and hung on for a draw after they equalised in the 2nd half. An extremely satisfying result considering their squad and how we ended our season last time against them and from that point, we cruised to the title with the 6-2 win at Salford confirming the promotion to the Football League.



Wrexham romped the Playoffs to join us nevertheless, and so began the mighty job of going professional, sorting out the contracts and improving the squad for 2024-25 in League Two.