MANAGER Dave Stringer takes charge of his 250th Rugby Town game in all competitions this weekend when Valley travel to the north of the county to try and dent Coleshill Town’s bid for promotion from the Midland League Premier Division.
Town will be looking to extend their two-match winning run at Pack Meadow, after Stringer’s 249th ended with a deserved 2-0 home success over Quorn on Saturday.
It has been a month of milestones for the Rugby manager, with March’s opening fixture – a 4-1 victory against Heanor – representing both his 200th league game as boss and his 300th as part of a Town management team, which incorporates a one year stint as Martin Sockett’s assistant for the 2010/11 season.
Stringer is still way behind the club’s longest serving manager – the late Jimmy Knox, who notched up more than 700 games in the 1980s and 90s, but is now within touching distance of current second placed incumbent Tony Dobson, who – like Stringer – enjoyed two spells in the Valley hot-seat.
Assuming the ex-Shepshed, Coalville and Chasetown boss remains for another crack at the Midland League challenge next season, he should pass Dobson’s tally within the first month of the campaign, but for now he will be concentrating on gathering as many points as possible from Town’s remaining twelve league outings.
Eight of these dozen games will be played away from home, and the first of these sees him lock horns again with his former assistant at Chasetown – Cameron Stuart.
Rugby will be looking for only their second double of the 2017/18 term, after they inflicted a first league defeat of the season on Coleshill in the reverse fixture at Butlin Road back in the middle of September.
Josh Ruff’s stoppage time winner rounded off a solid Rugby performance that day against the then leaders, but the defeat was only a minor blip for the visitors and in addition to their current lofty league position, they also enjoyed a decent run in the FA Vase until losing in the fifth round of the competition to Bracknell.
For the second game running, David Kolodynski and Ruben Wiggins-Thomas were both on-target in the Quorn win, as they continue to battle it out for Town’s end of the season top scorer prize.
Kolodynski currently has 23 goals to Wiggins-Thomas’s 21, after the club changed its stats to mirror the totals listed by the Midland League.
