Match Preview - Sleaford Town vs Gedling Miners Welfare, Saturday 9th August 2025

The Green Army are back again at Eslaforde Park this weekend to face Gedling Miners Welfare in the fifth matchday of the season.

Saturday’s opposition were founded in 1919 as simply “Gedling”, the club has undergone a wrath of name changes up to this point, including Gedling, Gedling Colliery and finally Gedling Miners Welfare. Throughout much of their history, The Miners had been one of the leading amateur teams in the Notts Alliance leagues, but the club officially entered the football pyramid in 2002 and have been regular fixtures of the eleventh and now the tenth level of the English game, where they have been since 2008. Since their transfer to the United Counties League, they have been consistent mid table finishers, with their best season coming last term where they were placed seventh. Gedling’s best FA Vase run to date has been the first round, which they have managed to get to on three occasions.

This campaign, the Nottinghamshire-based outfit have had a fairly bright start, picking up two wins in their first three games. That run included an opening day massacre of Rainworth MW (whom Sleaford themselves have already beaten) 7-0, and a 2-0 away victory at Clipstone. Gedling will be coming into the game fresher than town, having not played on Tuesday evening, but Sleaford will be buoyed by encouragement to improve on their 0-0 result against Southwell.

Town have now played 4 games since relegation to Step 6, and manager Matt Evans knows the challenge for himself; “I love football, whatever the level, I was involved at Step 6 before covid and I think the standard has improved” he says, “We were fully aware it would be competitive and challenging - which is why we were keen to stick around and give it our best efforts with the resources available.”

The boss is happy however with the progress that his youthful squad is making; “Some of the lads are adapting quicker than others and that’s ok” he suggests, “That’s the beauty of working with young players regularly, you get to see them grow in confidence and application.” “We see them get to grips with new challenges that our fans can observe during matches, however we are fortunate to see the training process too and that is a privilege”.

Ahead of the fixture against opposition who have already impressed, Evans makes no bones about what his side will be up against; “There won’t be an easy game this season” he admits, “Gedling will be a challenging opponent even if we had our strongest 11 available.” “It will be a good opportunity to assess where we are at with our longer-term ambitions as key men are away, it’s the responsibility of others to make use of the opportunity presented to them.” “ It will be a tough day, but as other fixtures have shown, anything could happen!”

All appropriate details for the fixture are available on Sleaford Town FC’s relevant social media pages.

Written by Oliver Burton