Excerpts from the Chairman's Programme Notes...
- On Saturday's big game...
“It’s always a great feeling to have something to play for in the last game of the season and, along with four other clubs, we have a chance of a play-off place if all the results go our way today. Newport’s win on Tuesday night pushes the odds out a little, but anything can happen in football.
"When you think about that 98th minute winner at Newport and various other games where we’ve dropped points in the last minutes of a game, we could have been comfortably in the play offs. But we are where we are, and we still have a chance."
- On a brilliant ending to the season...
“Our form and style of play of late has been an amazing change from the matches that went before it, showing what we’re capable of. I’ve loved watching us recently and that feeling has been missing a lot this season, so the management deserve a lot of praise for delivering the excitement and the style of football we expect to see from a Stevenage side.
"Being honest, Ilias Chair’s goals and assists have had a great deal to do with our transformation, whilst his desire to win and entertain has definitely been picked up by others and we’re all the better for it. Kurtis in particular seems to have clicked into gear and he’s scoring for fun. So, whatever happens, today thank you for coming out to support us and thanks for your support all season. I really hope we can build on this and give you something even better next season. We’ll do everything we can in the close season to add to the quality of our squad."
- On North Stand progress...
“As you can see if you look to the North, the new stand is coming on at an amazing rate. We’re exactly where I expected us to be and during the next four to six weeks, we’ll start to see the cladding and infrastructure going in. We’ll also be removing all the Home turnstiles and replacing them with automatic entrance gates, with tickets sold from five new windows in the North stand, as well as the Club shop, instead of the turnstiles.
"You can pay with cash or cards at the ticket windows, but it will always be cheaper to buy online in advance of the game, so you can walk up, scan your ticket and walk through.
"If we’re in the prediction business I’d expect to be close to opening the football facilities in the North stand by the start of the season. The bar might take a while longer, but we’ll obviously be trying to open everything ASAP. One thing we decided not to do was install the LED screen in the North East corner. We felt that with so much activity going on within the north stand site, the potential to damage data cables was too high to ignore and the smart way was to erect this in July when all the exterior stand work is finished."
---
Read the Chairman's full programme notes in Saturday's Stevenage v Cheltenham programme, available around the ground for just £3.
