20 June 2008

With less than two weeks to go now until we start pre-season training again, we have some more news regarding the squad.

Unfortunately, Nick Hegley has decided to join VCD Athletic. Nick has been a great player for us over the last three years but he has decided that at the age of 27, he wants to be playing pretty much all of the time and he doesn’t want to be spending time on the bench. We offered him a good deal to stay but we cannot guarantee him first team football and so he has decided to join the Kent League side.

We are disappointed by Nick’s decision but he goes with our very best wishes and we have parted on very good terms. Who knows, perhaps we will one day see Nick back in a Maidstone shirt but for now he is a VCD player.

We also have some bad news regarding Sam Tydeman. Sam has been working very hard over the summer to get fit and he has lost three quarters of a stone in this process. Unfortunately though, Sam has suffered a reoccurrence of the groin injury which has plagued him for the last year. Sam had been playing with the injury last season to help Lloyd and I out but he is now suffering for that and he will now not be able to continue with his pre-season preparations for a month. At the moment he is taking anti-inflammatory drugs and he is waiting for a cortisone injection which he hopes will resolve the injury.

On a more positive note, James Peacock is returning for pre-season and we have a number of reserve team players and trialists who will be aiming to establish themselves in the squad so there will be plenty of combinations of players for us to look at in our pre-season fixtures.