Published: Wednesday, 20th January, 2010 11:00am

McClurg eyes strong return to league action

by Sportsdesk

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Jermaine Gumbs will come up against his old side on Monday evening at Stubbs Lane

BINFIELD boss Steve McClurg is backing his side to take all three points when they finally play their first Hellenic League game of the year on Saturday.

The Moles had their first outing of 2010 when they travelled to Combined Counties Premier Division outfit Sandhurst Town in the Berks & Bucks Cup quarter-final on Tuesday evening.

And, remarkably, after a 42-day break from league action McClurg's side get their Premier Division campaign back underway this weekend with two games in the space of three days.

On Saturday Binfield travel to Oxfordshire to take on lowly Hook Norton. And then two days later they are due to host high-flying Flackwell Heath at Stubbs Lane.

Hook Norton sit second bottom of the Hellenic Premier Division with just one win to their name all season. And they have conceded a massive 93 goals in their 24 games.

But with the recent cold snap the pitch could be a real leveller and McClurg has warned his side that they have to be at the races from the opening whistle if they want to come home with anything from the fixture.

He said: "It will be good to get some points on the board and start with a win, but we will need to turn up and put in a performace.

"I hope the players are up for it, otherwise we have been doing something wrong the last few weeks.

"We are away from home, which always makes things more difficult. We will be approaching it like we do every game. Our preparations are the same whether they are top of the league, or bottom."

The Moles were missing a few first team regulars on Tuesday's cup trip to Sandhurst and McClurg admits he may well make a few changes for Saturday to allow as many players as possible to get some game time under the belts.

He said: "We had a few players unavailable on Tuesday night, so we might shuffle the pack a little bit to give everyone a bit of playing time over the next few games.

"Gary Callaway was suspended and Tim Walsh was unavailable so they may well come in for Saturday with a few others."

Another player who missed out on Tuesday night is striker Jermaine Gumbs, who was cup-tied.

The former Bracknell Town and Slough hitman scored six times in 13 games for the Moles earlier in the season before earning a move to Flackwell Heath. Despite scoring on his debut for the Heathens he soon fell out of favour and returned to the Moles.

On Monday Gumbs will be taking on his old team and his boss hopes he shows Flackwell what they are missing.

McClurg added: "He is another player missing against Sandhurst so we will look to give him playing time over the weekend.

"I hope he's fired up and wants to prove a point."

And McClurg knows the going will be tough against a Flackwell side, who sit just two points behind Binfield in the league table with four games in hand.

He said: "They are a good side. We will not be thinking about it until after we've got the Hook Norton game out of the way because I'm a believer in taking one game at a time.

"If you start looking too far ahead it is easy to take your eye off the ball. But they will definitely give us a good game."