Marcus Braddock gives his insight into tonight's game against the Bucks
Tonight, Shrewsbury Town take the short trip to Wellington to face Telford. The Bucks are currently in the Football Conference North and finished last season in 14th place after a season that brought them 8 home wins and 8 away wins. Sadly they lost 10 at home and 11 away from home so the season wasn't the success that Bucks fans would have wanted.
We meet again
Telford have had one or two players who have been with Shrewsbury for part or all of their youth career but there are one or two who played a larger part for us. Dom Smith had and still has good potential to be an excellent central defender and I was a sad to see him go as I'd hoped to see him follow in the footsteps of Conor Goldson and find a career in the upper reaches of the league. At 22 he still has plenty of time to forge a decent career, especially with good experience in Shropshire with Shrewsbury and Telford.
Summary
For this one I'm very much with Mr Askey, talk of rivalry is a little out of place given the distance between the two clubs positions in the league. That's not to denigrate Telford's position, it's just the fact, we've barely played each other in anything other than the Shropshire Senior Cup in the modern era. If I'm honest a little part of me would like to see Telford rise in the leagues because it would be nice to have a proper Derby game against a genuinely close team. As much fun as the other “local” Derbies are, they all have bigger fish to fry than us.
Whatever happens in this game I hope it's played in the right spirit, obviously Telford are going to want to get something so they'll be well motivated and probably at us from the whistle. If we can weather their pressure we should find it a good test on our road to match fitness ready for Bradford City on August 4th.