Match Preview: Bemerton Heath Harlequins v Yate Town

Yate Town travel to Bemerton Heath Harlequins for an FA Trophy First Qualifying Round game, this being their fifth consecutive Saturday on the road. After 6 straight wins the Bluebells tasted defeat for the first time this season at Hungerford Town last Saturday in the FA Cup and will be looking to bounce
back and have a successful run in the FA Trophy.
Yate Town manager, Darren Mullings, will be hoping that Ross Stearn may be fit to make his first appearance for the club at some stage in Saturday’s game following a niggling injury.
After a busy start to the season, with seven games in August, the squad will have had their midweek training session this week and be eager to get back to winning ways.
In the event of the game at Bemerton being level after 90 minutes the tie will be settled on penalties as there are no replays in the FA Trophy.
Yate Town haven’t got a very impressive record in the FA Trophy but in season 2019/2020 they did manage to make progress to the First Round Proper by beating Tiverton in a replay after two 3-3 draws were settled on penalties at Lodge Road, followed by a home 6-3 win against AFC Totton and a very impressive 2-1 win at Braintree but in the First Round Proper, it was National League side Eastleigh, who were victorious winning 6-1 on the South Coast.
The winners of Saturday’s will collect £1500 prize money whilst the losing club will receive £400 with the Second Qualifying Round being played on Saturday 21st September and the draw being made on Monday.

Form Guide
This is Bemerton’s second season in the Southern League and in their inaugural season; after gaining promotion from the Wessex League, they finished in 13th position.
This season, they started with a good away 2-2 draw at Willand Rovers with Daniel Young scoring both their goals. They the lost 0-1 at home to Westbury United, who scored the winner with a stoppage time goal, and this was following by another 0-1 reversal when the were defeated at Bishops Cleeve and again it was a late goal that settled the match. On Bank Holiday Monday they drew 1-1 at home to Didcot with Freddie Bullard scoring the Bemerton goal. The Salisbury based club currently sit in 20th position in the League table with 2 points from 4 league games.
In the FA Cup, in the Extra Preliminary Round, Bemerton drew 1-1 at home to Brockenhurst and won the replay 1-0 but in the Preliminary Round they lost 1-3 at home to Leverstock & Ford.

Previous meetings
Last season’s Southern League game at Bemerton, on 7th October, the first time the clubs met, saw the hosts race away into a 4-0 lead by half time with goals from Stuart Green, Lamin Jaffa (2) and George Britton scoring their goals in the first 23 minutes – there was no further goals in the game - but in the return fixture on 13th January it was the Bluebells who turned things around winning 3-0 with goals from Nick McCootie, Calum English-Brown and Oli Jenkins in front of 234 fans.

Getting there: