After a dose of weekend woe, a chance to make it up midweek as Stevenage Football Club go westwards ho! to Cheltenham Town Football Club. For the newly arisen among us, “Chelters” came second in last season’s “Sides Promoted From Non-League That Make You Go Meh” contest. It wasn’t a close run thing in the end, as Grimsby Town took the title by a country mile. But it’s not personal, before anyone starts grief signalling and writes to their local MP. It’s just that it’d have been nice for a newer side to come up. Forest Gump, maybe? Eastleigh?
Mind you, everyone in ‘non-league’ will soon be ‘Football League’ if Shaun Harvey gets his way. Even Woking!
Back to the matter at hand, and the trip to the World Of Smile Stadium. Yeah, that’s its name. And you can be sure all post-match reports will offer forward a tip and a wink towards it no matter what the result is. It is our first meeting with the Robins, for reasons we’ve already been painfully clear about, since April ’15. On that occasion, a Bennedypennedy was enough to secure the points in a 1-0 win. If truth be told, we’ll settle for that again to get over the Exeter defeat post haste, hence forth and forth haste post. Hence.
Cheltenham Town v Stevenage: Watch Out Below!
The first thing to observe is that Cheltenham Town sit below us in the League Two table as things stand. So do Exeter. And so do Wycombe. In fact, swap the Grecians and the Chairboys around in the table and the run of four clubs between 20th and 23rd conveniently gives you a list of four fixtures that we’re in the middle of. If we hadn’t taken two-thirds of naff all from the first two of those, we’d be a little more excited about taking on a side below us in the table – especially with our form on the road. But it hasn’t exactly been going to plan…
You could say that our recent head-to-head record gives us some cause for cheer, however. We’ve had it out with the Robins on 11 occasions, with a modest 14 goals to our name. A big slice of that goal pie (10 to be exact) are what came from our last THREE meetings; three meetings that were all wins and, indeed, our only wins since first meeting in December 1997. It glosses over a less-than-glorious head-to-head all told. But, it’s a ball to pick up and run with, which – if we literally do that on the night – won’t go down well with the ref.
Cheltenham Town v Stevenage: Circles, squares, triangles and League Two stats from Kick Off:
BoroGuide’s Cheltenham Town club profile – steals from the rich to give to the not rich…
