Herts Senior County League Premier Division London Lions 4 Sandridge Rovers 2 MANAGER Kevin Barton is looking forward to a bright future for Sandridge Rovers as they bid to progress as a club in 2008/09. Barton has stepped up from a successful spell

Herts Senior County League Premier Division

London Lions 4 Sandridge Rovers 2

MANAGER Kevin Barton is looking forward to a bright future for Sandridge Rovers as they bid to progress as a club in 2008/09.

Barton has stepped up from a successful spell as reserve team manager to replace outgoing boss Bob Fowler for the new campaign. He is anticipating a tough start to the season, highlighted by the 4-2 reverse at London Lions in the league opener but is confident that things will come together for a bright campaign. Barton said: "It has been a bit of a change at the club. It will be a fairly hard month for me, every time I have players coming back from holiday I have two players going away. There is no settled team at the moment and it proved that on Saturday.

"We were 4-0 down at half time due to some bad defending errors. We changed it around second half and finally lost 4-2. London Lions are a good team, they play nice football. I think 90 per cent of their players were there and I only had 65-70 per cent of mine. The second half was a really good performance and we deserved to get back into the game. We controlled the game in the second half.

"We have got some good youngsters. Josh Galloway and Danny Johnson both gave good performances. Josh played on the right and Danny on the left. They are both 18 and are exciting players. Chris Wilding is also a youngster and he had a good performance. I think once this month is out of the way and we have everybody back in September we will really get going."

Prolific Sandridge striker Chris Wickens scored a penalty and young forward Wilding netted with a header. Wickens also had a chance to pull Sandridge right back into the contest but could not take it and the final score was 4-2.

Today (Thursday) Rovers host Bedmond Sports & Social before they are in Aubrey Cup action on Saturday with a tough fixture away to Met Police Bushey.

Sandridge chairman Nigel Rump is delighted with the appointment of Barton as manager and praised former boss Fowler. He said: "Kevin Barton has taken over the mantle from Bob. It is a bit of a transitional start to the season but Kevin has brought a lot of young players with him and it is quite pleasing to be honest.

"Bob has been fantastic. He is one of the nicest guys you could ever want to meet in football. A real diamond geezer.