Match Preview

Eastbourne Borough: What you need to know
By Colin Bradbury

Some background on Truro City's next opponents

An interesting weekend ahead in the National League South as four of the teams around Truro City (17th in the table) play each other. Margate (19th) host St Albans (21st), whilst Wealdstone (18th) travel to Hayes & Yeading (16th). So there could be some significant changes in league standings at that end of the table by 5pm on Saturday.

And with Truro City’s next two opponents (St Albans and Weston-Super-Mare) currently occupying the bottom two spots, the three matches taking place over the next 10 days are going to be important.

Turning to this Saturday, Truro City will visit Eastbourne Borough’s 4,100 capacity Priory Lane ground.

Eastbourne have recent experience of playing at the highest level of non-league football. After 4 years in the Conference South, in 2008 Eastbourne won promotion to the Conference National, where they stayed for three years before dropping back down in 2011. The club finished 11th in the Conference South last season.

After opening the 2015-16 season with two losses, Eastbourne won their next four matches before losing again last Bank Holiday Monday (a 4-0 defeat to Havant & Waterlooville, with Eastbourne reduced to 10 men after 30 minutes). All-in-all, it’s not been a relaxing time for the club’s supporters, with six of those seven matches decided by a single goal.

Eastbourne’s six goals so far this season have come from five different players, with only Elliott Romain bagging more than one.

Those 12 points leave the club in 9th place in the National League South currently.

In contrast to some other clubs in the league, Eastbourne appear to have had a relatively quiet closed-season in terms of transfers.

In terms of players to watch, striker Nathaniel Pinney, who joined Eastbourne mid-way through last season, looks to be influential. With Crystal Palace amongst other clubs on his CV, he has the distinction of being named by Wilfred Zaha as the player who kept him out of the Palace youth team.

Darren Lok and Elliott Romain (the latter signed this summer and is described as “a quick and direct frontman with the ability to be in the right place at the right time”), are the other key strikers. Both have found the net already this season, twice in the case of ex-Millwall and Brighton man Romain.

At the other end, goalkeeper Lewis Carey has a reputation for keeping clean sheets – 15 in total last season, including a 6 match run of shut-outs. Eastbourne have been pretty tight at the back so far this season as well, with three clean sheets in seven. The former Bristol City ‘keeper is clearly not an easy man to get past.

Club Trivia

In 2013, Eastbourne were in talks to sell the club to a Kuwaiti company. Whether that would have resulted in the kind of investment Abu Dhabi has poured into Manchester City, or Qatar into PSG, we’ll never know as the deal fell through. Shame really as “Zlatan to Eastbourne!” would’ve been a Transfer Window headline to remember.