Wendron United Reserves’ joint-manager Josh McDonald is looking forward to life in the Combination League after his side won promotion from the Trelawny League.

The team finished second in this year’s Trelawny Premier to return to the Combination League after a ten-year absence.

McDonald said: “When Mitchy [joint-manager Andrew Mitchell] and I took over a couple of years ago it was always our eventual goal to get back in the Combination League, so it’s good to have done that.

It means the reserves will be just one division below the first-team, who finished 13th in SWPL Division 1 West last season.

“It really helps Jack [Greenwood, first-team manager] out to have players that extra level up really,” McDonald said. “So the step up to the first team, they’re a bit more prepared for it. 

“It’s the whole point of having a reserve team isn’t it, to help your first team out. 

"We had lots of players go up and help out this season and hopefully it’ll be the same next year but they’re just that bit more prepared for it as they’ll just know this level a bit better.

A number of second-team players were called upon to help out Wendron's first-team during the backlog of postponed fixtures at the tail end of last season.

Wendron was one of the worst-affected SWPL clubs last year, and ended up having to play 11 of their 32 league matches in April alone.

“We were all stretched pretty bare in the run-in really," McDonald said. "So it’s been good that the whole club’s pulled together. I think the fourth team goalkeeper went up and helped them [the first-team] out.

"Obviously you can’t always help them out but yeah it’s just getting through it at the end of the day.

While Josh is happy about securing promotion, he is still wondering what might have been after his side lost out to Mawnan in the title race by just one point.

“We beat them at their place 4-2 and at our place 5-1 so we had two good wins against them, but a few bad losses at a period where we were without a game for a few weeks killed us really.”

“We just lacked that bit of momentum going into the run-in but it was good to get through it.”

Attention now turns to the new campaign, and Josh has his eyes on more than just survival next season.

He said: “It would be good to get a top-half finish, a top-eight finish would be ideal really.

“I would expect us or hope for us to finish in the top half and get a couple more players in with Combination experience, because that’s what we’re lacking at the moment, and hopefully we can go from there and turn a few heads and make people take notice of us.”