Danny Grainger ahead of the FA Cup game against St Albans
We spoke to club captain Danny Grainger ahead of training on Thursday morning as the lads prepare for the FA Cup first round game at St Albans on Sunday.“We won’t be taking the game lightly,” he said. “Everyone loves the magic of the FA Cup with the upsets and things like that. If we went down there and got beat I think it would be a big upset because of the way we’ve been playing.
"We should be going down there and getting a result, but we’ll show them the same respect that we would do with any team. We’ll do our homework and I’m sure the gaffer and his staff have been watching them and things like that.
"We’ll know everything about them as a set of players. The group of players we’ve got won’t go there and expect to roll them over. We know we’ll have to work hard and it will be a tough game."
“A Thursday is the day where the focus really switches to the game at the weekend," he told us. "There isn’t a second at the club at the moment where you can take your foot off the gas.
"There’s real competition for places and that showed last week, because there are lads waiting in the wings to step in. The standard of training is fantastic, there’s a real high tempo and everything is sharp. You come off after every session knowing you’ve worked hard."
“The mentality needs to be exactly the same as it was for the Welling game last year," he continued. "We know the dressing rooms aren’t going to be what we’re used to, and things like that, but it’s about our mentality when we turn up.
"We’ll focus on doing everything right, from training the day before to the warm-up before the game. We’ll prepare properly and the lads will make sure everyone is ready."
On the added excitement the competition brings, he said: “I’m not sure what it is about the FA Cup that brings the extra buzz. I’ve obviously been up in Scotland, so I didn’t really get it, but I remember my first FA Cup game at Peterborough and it did feel different. Even when you sit and watch the draw you have a buzz about who you’re going to get.
“We’ve been lucky in the cups lately and we've had some good draws. We went to Derby last season, and had Everton and Liverpool last year, so we’ll go down to St Albans, we'll work hard and do everything we can to make sure we’re in the hat for the next round.”
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