Shildon manager Gary Forrest says that the Railwaymen will have virtually the same squad as last season – and he’s hoping for more recognition of the club’s successes.

Shildon agonisingly failed to win their last game of the season at Bedlington, handing the title to Marske United, but now Forrest believes that the squad has improved with the summer signings.

“I didn’t want to change an awful lot in the team,” he said. “Some players have left – for example, Lee Scroggins wanted to play for his home town club, South Shields and Adam Rundle has gone to be player-manager of Norton. Chris Emms has also gone to Marske and Liam Atkin has left the club.

“We’ve brought in some new players. We watched Kyle Fryatt for a while, and he has stood out many times. Jonny Davis has won the league before with Darlington and fits our style of football. Dan Groves has come from Spennymoor and has got plenty of experience in defence, and Lewis Wing was runner up in the league’s young player of the year award when he was at Seaham Red Star.

“It’s going to be a tougher league this season, everybody else is going hell-for-leather to try and win it.

“We didn’t get the recognition we deserved last season. We won the League Cup and Durham Challenge Cup, nearly got through to the first round of the FA Cup, and finished second in the league because we couldn’t score another goal in the last game of the season. And some people have said that we underachieved! Maybe if we hadn’t had our FA Cup run we would have won the league, because we seemed to have a bad result after every FA cup tie. We lost our focus a little bit.

“So last season’s record speaks for itself, which is why we decided not to change much. I believe that we have brought in four very good, hungry footballers.”