It has not been the most successful of pre-season periods for Exmouth Town, writes Steve Birley.

That said, how do you judge pre-season success? A supporter will always point to results and, the fact that Town have not won many of their warm up games – granted they only lost one – that a 1-0 reversal in a midweek evening home meeting with Elmore.

Town completed their pre-season friendly programme with that defeat to the Mid Devon men in a game that saw Town’s starting line-up featuring many of the players that are expected to be in the squad for the FA Cup tie at Keynsham on Tuesday.

However, there were some notable absentees in Aarron Denny, Ben Steer, Dean Billingsly, Kieran Willdigg and Adam Bilcock.

For the second game in succession Town failed to score and slipped to a 1-0 defeat with the visitors taking advantage of some slack marking to score the only goal of the game with 35 minutes played.

Town’s leading goal scorer last season, Jordan Harris with 32 goals in all competitions, has failed to find the net in the friendlies and manager, Kevin Hill, will be hoping he has re-discovered his scoring touch when the season starts in earnest this coming Tuesday.

Once again Hill gave playing time to all the substitutes and brothers Tom and Ollie Bray both featured having stepped up from Town’s successful Under-18s side.

Away from the actual result, of greater importance to the Town management dup of Kevin Hill and his trusted number two Andy Rawlings will be the fact that pre-season games are more about ‘getting distance and time into legs’ than ‘the final match score’.

Indeed, a win at Keynsham Town on their artificial surface this coming Tuesday will consign any pre-season concerns of the Town rank and file support to the memory bank!

Here’s hoping that Town’s talisman, Aaron Denny is fit for the game and that Town can indeed make it through to the next round of the competition.

We wish them well......