Football - Rovers link brings added interest to Town friendly (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Football - Rovers link brings added interest to Town friendly

1:21pm Saturday 1st August 2009 in Sport By Arran Jolly

KENDAL Town boss Lee Ashcroft has warned his side that they have seen the last of easy pre-season games as Kendal prepare to take on a Leigh Genesis side containing some well-known Premiership names at Parkside Road on Saturday.

After knocking six past a youthful Preston last weekend, Ashcroft told his squad to expect a tough time in their remaining three warm-up games with physical encounters expected against Runcorn and Clitheroe next week. But first Town face a tricky match against Leigh.

Leigh slipped out the Unibond Premier Division last season after a campaign that ended in disappointment with Genesis finishing second bottom.

However, the Greater Manchester side are now hoping that two former Blackburn Rovers stars will propel them out of the Unibond League Division One and back into the Unibond Premier.

Having taken over the reins at Leigh at the tailend of last season, former Manchester City and Blackburn Rovers midfielder Garry Flitcroft has recruited former Rovers team mate Matt Jansen to spearhead the Genesis front line in their fight for promotion.

The pair have over 400 appearances in the Blackburn shirt between them, but have also had contrasting careers in the game. While Jansen was blessed with a natural talent that earned a call up to Sven Goran Eriksson’s England side, a tragic moped crash in 2002 nearly killed the 31-year-old and curtailed his top-flight footballing career.

By contrast, Flitcroft spent over ten-years at Ewood Park and captained Blackburn as a tenacious skipper.

Having known the former Blackburn captain for many years Kendal’s Ashcroft revealed he’s been in regular contact with Flitcroft throughout the summer which brought about Saturday's friendly.

The Kendal boss said: “ I know Garry and his brother David (David Flitcroft, assistant manager at Rochdale) very well. Garry has come from fantastic career as a player and is looking for something similar in management. He’s been on the phone quite a bit over the summer asking about players to sign and I’ve been giving him a bit of advice.”

The former Preston North End player added: “ We’re expecting a difficult game against Leigh and we’ll be treating it very much as a Unibond Premier League fixture and that’s realistic given some of the players they’ve got.”

With the Unibond Premier League kicking off in just two weeks Town’s manager also revealed the team are chomping at the bit to get going again: “ The Ilkeston game seems like a very long time ago now. Pre season seems to have dragged on a bit as we’ve played a lot of games, we’re just all wanting to get going now.”

Kick-off is at 3pm.