Bury Town manager Cole Skuse felt continuity was key for best platform for promotion charge ahead of opener at Concord Rangers
Bury Town manager Cole Skuse believes keeping the overwhelming majority of his squad together was the most important thing ahead of having another crack at promotion out of Step 4.
The Blues recovered from a shaky start under the new management team last term to put a storming run together that led to them ending up second in the Pitching In Isthmian League North Division, four points back from champions Lowestoft Town.
But the season ended in play-off heartbreak as Brentwood Town scored twice in extra-time to win the semi-final tie in west Suffolk 3-1.
Despite Skuse’s former Ipswich Town team-mate Bailey Clements featuring in Bury’s defence in pre-season along with Bermuda international Willie Clemons at the top end of the pitch, they will go into the season opener at relegated side Concord Rangers on Saturday (3pm) with just two new additions.
Centre-back Taylor Parr and left-sided player Mikey Davis both arrived from Cambridge City, who have received a lateral transfer into Bury’s division, in June.
Only three players have departed, with Ollie Yun having stepped up to Step 3 with Leiston – who Bury beat 1-0 at home in last Friday’s pre-season friendly with a late Clemons goal – while Jose Santa de la Paz, who ended the last campaign out of loan, has signed for now divisional rivals Newmarket Town. Fellow striker Louie Arnold has returned to Cornard United, though is understood to be dual registered, should the Blues require him.
And the low turnover of players was something Skuse felt would be key to a successful follow-up season.
“The squad is in a real good spot,” he said.
“It would not take an extreme football specialist to know that we would want to keep a very similar squad because the boys have done so well last season and as a squad they became really, really close.
“It would have been incredibly foolish of me to go ‘right I need to get rid of players’ and then bring in an awful lot of trialists that could upset the camp.
“We ended up losing a couple of bodies for positive reasons as well as bringing in two really, really good signings for us.”
He revealed that having Clements with them was about helping out a friend to ‘keeping him topped up with fitness’ to return to a higher level, while former Stowmarket player Clemons, working his way back from an ACL knee injury after leaving Braintree Town, could not be guaranteed the first-team football he wanted.
Automatic promotion via winning the league will be what Bury set out striving for, but Skuse knows that or booking a play-off return will be far from easy.
“We know we’re coming up against clubs that have got bigger resources than us,” he said.
“But we’re looking at the group that we’ve assembled and the way we’ve gone about our work towards the last part of the season and we’ll be looking to be at the top end of the table, for sure.
“However, we’ve not naïve enough to think that just because we finished second last season that it gives us a divine right to finish anywhere near that.
“We’ve arguably created our own biggest challenge by doing what we did last season and we know there’s teams that have improved over the summer but we’re a really, really good group of players and it’s a challenge we’ll relish.”
Bury go into a ‘really tough’ opener at Cornard Rangers in Canvey Island without striker Luke Brown (back) and Ryan Horne (hamstring) while fellow midfielder Louis Henman-Mason is still working his way back from an ACL injury.
Asked who he thinks will be their main rivals for promotion this season, he said: “Felixstowe (& Walton United) again look strong, they’ve got a good group and I know Maldon & Tiptree have recruited very, very well again.
“But we’re not naïve enough to think that it’s going to be two or three other teams, we know it can be a selection of teams competing and we’ll concentrate on our own patch.”
