Martin preparing for worst

Romford’s Paul Martin is preparing himself for bad news, ahead of the club’s first pre-season friendly next week.

Boro boss Martin is set to field a team of trialists against Barkingside at Chigwell on Tuesday and is waiting to see if all of his first-team squad agree returns to the club.

He said: “I’ve got a few players who have been asked to go for trials elsewhere. It’s going to happen.

“They haven’t signed anything and they’ve done it the right way, asking if it is alright to go.

“They might be back next week, but we can’t hold players to ransom.

“We must be doing something right if they’re going for trials at Ryman Premier and Conference South clubs, that’s football.

“We’ve rebuilt for the last five or six years and started fresh before. But we’ve always put a side out to compete at this level.”

Martin was due to oversee a training match between his first-team squad and trialists at Newbury Park last night (Thursday) and will run the rule over his hopefuls again next week, before the trip to Lowestoft (July 14).

He added: “We’ve mixed and match it in game situations during training and there has been some positive reaction towards the trialists.

“The game between them and the first-team squad will tell us how strong they are.

“There won’t be any first-team boys at the Barkingside game, but the trialists will be strong.

“We did the same last year and hopefully we can have a good look and then take a fairly strong mixture to Lowestoft.”

Fixtures for the new Ryman Division One North season are due to be released next Friday and Martin has already got his ideas on who will be the teams to beat.

He added: “It’s all going well at the moment, but it will be another tough test.

“Maldon and Brentwood are looking strong and there’s definitely money out there for some clubs.

“It would be nice if we could find a sugar daddy ourselves!”