Next Up! Stags are at home again this Saturday.

The Stags will be back at the Snows Stadium again this Saturday, continuing their pursuit of promotion when they welcome 5th placed Bristol Manor Farm.

Tickets on sale now: afctotton.ticketco.events/uk/en

Currently on-target for their best ever league finish, Bristol Manor Farm go into their last half-dozen Southern League Div.1 South matches of the season with realistic hopes of qualifying for the Promotion Play-Offs. But they, more than any other team, will have one eye glancing over their shoulder at a potential late run that may yet come from Plymouth Parkway to derail their promotion bid.

Because, while the Farmy Army – who also answer to the nickname of The Portwaymen – have played 30 games in the league this season, Parkway have only played 24, leaving them with 6 games in-hand with only 7 points to make up on the team currently occupying the last of the play-off spots.

But, Bristol Manor Farm have points on the board and will make the 111-mile trip to the Snows Stadium on Saturday with every intention of reining in the Stags, with whom they are level on 55 points after matching Totton’s 1-0 win over Cirencester Town last weekend with a 2-0 triumph of their own at home to Willand Rovers.

Occupied exclusively with league games since the turn of the year, and therefore only playing on Saturdays, manager Lee Lashenko has seen his team lose only once in the last nine matches, to a Charles Hanson strike 4 minutes into stoppage time at the end of their match at Bideford’s Sports Ground. A couple of 2-0 victories over fellow promotion play-off hopefuls helped their cause immensely, when they defeated Parkway in Plymouth at the end of January and, two weeks later, won at home against Paulton Rovers – the side who helped themselves to four goals during their visit to Totton in December.

Lashenko recently strengthened his team’s attacking ranks with what he described to the Southern League’s website as the “ruthless” signing of striker Kye Simpson from Mangotsfield United, who marked his Manor Farm debut with the second of those goals against Willand Rovers, taking him to 13 league goals for the season, just one behind his brother Kane, who leads the frontline for Frome Town.

Other recent recruits at the Creek include Bristol Rovers Academy graduate George Fowler, a 19-year-old midfielder who was allowed to leave Paulton Rovers to make the switch early this month. But they also lost 28-year-old winger Jamie Short, who moved up to the Southern League Premier Division South to join promotion-chasing Taunton Town for a third spell.

Having stumbled against Larkhall Athletic recently but recovered with a well-earned win against Cirencester, Dan Sackman’s men will be determined to confirm their own play-off credentials by taking all three points to keep Bristol Manor Farm’s challenge at arm’s length.

BRISTOL MANOR FARM – LAST 5 MATCHES (All Competitions)

Sat 12 Feb       Paulton Rovers             H         Southern League Div.1 South            W     2-0      

Sat 19 Feb       Bideford                          A        Southern League Div.1 South               L      0-1

Sat 26 Feb      Highworth Town         H         Southern League Div.1 South             W     4-0      

Sat 05 Mar     Slimbridge                      A         Southern League Div.1 South               D     1-1

Sat 12 Mar      Willand Rovers             H         Southern League Div.1 South             W     2-0

AFC TOTTON vs BRISTOL MANOR FARM – Previous Meetings

Bristol Manor Farm were promoted to the Southern League Div.1 South & West, as it was then, in 2017 and, until the 2-2 draw at BMF’s the Creek Stadium earlier this season, Totton had won every time the two sides met, amounting to seven consecutive wins.

A 3-2 away win in December 2017 was followed-up with a 3-1 comeback victory in the return fixture in March 2018. Then the Stags took all 6 points in the 2018/19 season with a pair of 2-1 wins, with Craig Feeney and Justin Bennett scoring the Totton goals in both matches. Feeney scored two more in the 3-2 away win in September 2019, while Ollie Bradley’s 39^th-minute strike made the difference in the home match in January 2020. Ethan Taylor (below, centre) scored the first goal in the home win in October 2020, with a Brett Williams brace making it 3-0, in the season that was never completed.

The last meeting between these sides was all the way back in early September, when two free-kick goals from Owen Howe – who has since moved on to Barnstaple Town – cancelled out strikes by Hisham Kasimu and Ethan Taylor, in a match that Totton ended with only 10 men following the dismissal of Callum Baughan (above, right) for a last-man foul.

By Ben Rochey-Adams and Malcolm Tombs, Historian

Image courtesy of Craig Hobbs Photography

Kits illustrations courtesy of Bolid74