I think everybody at Spalding United can be very proud of how this season in Evo-Stik NPL First Division South has panned out.
Sure, finishing in mid-table hasn’t delivered the excitement of last year’s incredible run to reach the play-off final – but this season has presented some tough challenges for Chris Rawlinson and his side.
Losing club stalwart Nathan Stainfield (for my money the best defender in the league throughout his time with the Tulips) and the goal-power of Bradley Wells and Leon Mettam gave the management an unenviable task over the summer.
The start of the campaign did give fans plenty of reason for optimism, but that was shattered by the enforced mid-season budget cut, which saw more key players leave and nobody come in to replace them.
I must admit that I feared for the club’s Step Four status at one point, especially in the lead-up to Christmas.
A return to the UCL Premier Division did start to look like a realistic proposition – but the hunger of the board and management to maintain Spalding’s status as South Holland’s highest-ranked team soon shone through.
Their incredible end-of-season run – Spalding won five away games on the spin before their loss at Lincoln United on the final day – was no fluke.
The Tulips have slowly become a much more cohesive unit despite some tricky results at the beginning of the year – and Rawlinson always insisted that their luck would change and that the goals would come.
As somebody that has seen many different versions of Spalding over the years, it’s been a breath of fresh air to see the management give younger players a chance during the season’s darker times, too. That will only serve the Tulips well moving forward.
If you’d have asked me where Spalding would finish earlier in the year, I would probably have leaned towards 15th place or lower.
But it’s a credit to all involved with the club that a top ten was still a real possibility in the final weeks of the season, before they sealed 13th.
So while there has been less excitement this time around (something that fans were – perhaps harshly – calling the players on earlier in the season), I believe that the Tulips should emerge from this season with a huge amount of credit.
