It's taken us a few months to get into our stride, admits Fisher boss Billy Walton

FISHER manager Billy Walton says morale hasn’t dropped at the club despite their lowly position in the table.

The Fish are rooted in the bottom two in the Southern Counties East Football League table after picking up two wins and three draws from 15 games.

Walton’s side are four points clear of basement side Woodstock Sports and three points adrift of the team immediately above them, Rochester United.

Fisher knocked Rochester United out of the League Cup on Monday as Craig Maguire’s 87^th minute penalty – his fourth penalty goal of the season – won the game on the night, winning the tie 4-1 on aggregate.

The game marked the end of Darren Phillips’ reign at Rochester United after the 35-year-old resigned minutes after the game citing work commitments.

Matt Hume, who guided the club out of the Kent Invicta League as champions a couple of years ago, has agreed to step in as interim manager until the end of the season.

Hume’s first game back in charge will be at home to Fisher in the league, which will be the two club’s fourth meeting of the season.

“It will be extremely tough won’t it,” warned Walton.

“I was impressed with Rochester on Monday night. Since we played them in the first leg, fair play to them, they’ve improved. They’ve got a load of new players in and they’ve improved vastly on their performance that day.”

When asked whether Rochester’s players will be out for revenge for Fisher’s win at the beginning of the week, Walton said: “Yes, without a doubt! We’ve knocked them out of the Cup. They will want to come at us. We will prepare on Thursday night. We’ve got a few players back for Saturday. We were a bit skinny on Monday.

“Hopefully, Richard Morgan will be back from his injury from Lordswood four or five weeks ago and the other signing I’ve made on Monday.”

Striker, Junior James, 25, has returned to the club on a dual-registration from their Ryman Premier League landlords Dulwich Hamlet.

“He’s a good player,” said Walton. “He’s very quick, he knows where the back of the goal is.

“He’s played for a very good club in Dulwich. I’ve known him for quite a while and hopefully he can give us a little bit of quality.”

Fisher finished in the bottom four (fourteenth-place) in the Kent League last season. They won seven and drawn seven of their 32 games, finishing on 28 points.

The Fish have collected only nine points this season and when asked what his targets are for the rest of the season, Walton replied: “I’d love to get more points than last year. That’s our aim. I said we’ll finish in the top half of the table and I’m pretty sure that’s where we’ll finish.”

Walton added: “It’s two points better than last season after fifteen games so it’s an improvement but it hasn’t gone great has it?”

Popular figure Walton admits he got things wrong during pre-season and the club are paying the price.

He said: “I blame myself as I’ve said to you before. I didn’t do the pre-season right which I’ve learnt a lot from and it’s taken quite a lot of weeks or months to get into our stride.

“There’s a lot of new faces, a lot of young lads.  I don’t think the results have shown how good we are. You can only go by your results. We’ve played really well and I think it’s only a matter of time we start clicking.”

Walton added: “We’ve never dropped our morale. Our morale has been great.

“I’m more than pleased and everyone can see that we’re gradually getting there – we’re doing alright.”

Visit Fisher’s website: www.fisherfc.co.uk

Rochester United  v  Fisher

Southern Counties East Football League

Saturday 30^th November 2013

Kick Off 3:00pm

At Rede Court Road, Strood, Rochester, Kent ME2 3TU