A Look Ahead: Corr blimey, its been 23 years!

Tomorrow the Swindon faithful will make the trip west to Devonshire for an unfamiliar tie with The Grecians, Exeter City. It has been 23 years since these two teams met in the league, when Swindon recorded a 3-0 win away from home back in 1986 in what was then the "Canon League Division 4", this being the equivalent of the now Coca Cola League 2. This being a strong testament to Exeter's fall and climb back to where they are now. With back to back promotions under their belt, Paul Tisdale's team will surely be looking for consolidation in League 1 this season. A few of us will remember being there for Exeter's playoff promotion to League 2 two years ago, as part of the 42,511 strong, Conference playoff final record breaking crowd that attended Wembley that day. A few of us also won't remember it too well as they had far too much to drink ;-)

The last time Swindon and Exeter met competitively was in the LDV Vans Trophy - Southern Area - 2nd Round back in 2004 which saw a Swindon reverse win, two goals to one. Amazingly, having not played each other in such a long time, they now meet twice in 7 days.

Through the years, Swindon and Exeter have shared some legends (in the eyes of a Swindon fan) on the pitch. Some noticeable names including Wayne Carlisle, Christian Roberts, and Gary Alexander. In Swindon's Premiership promotion winning squad of 1993, two players featured who previously were on the books at Exeter. Martin Ling was signed for a fee of £25K by manager Lou Macari in 1986. 'Lingy' played only twice before being off-loaded, then resigned by Glenn Hoddle in 1991. And in the same year, Town hero Shaun Taylor was signed from Exeter by Hoddle for £200K after being named Exeter's player of the year. Interestingly, Taylor is now living in Exmouth and is part of the Youth team coach setup at St. James Park and his younger brother Craig also plied is trade at both the County Ground and St. James Park.

Moving to more recent times, a certain Mr. Barry Corr signed for Exeter at the start of the season after being released from the County Ground. Corr was deemed surplus to requirements because of the struggle to keep him fit. However injury prone big Baz is, all Town fans will know of the danger his lofty height of 6ft3in can pose. After getting through his suspension for hitting Leeds' Michael Doyle in his debut for Exeter City, Corr has begun to string together some substitute appearances for the Grecians, and the fans' forums have high expectations of him.

There is good news ahead of tomorrow's game coming from the Exeter camp. New loan-signing Craig Noone is set to start. The 21 year-old who is on-loan from local rivals Plymouth was taken off at the weekend with a suspected injury but has been given the all clear for the Robins clash. He also had a goal wiped off the chalk board in that game in a spurious manner.

Another loan signing in Striker Stuart Fleetwood should also return to the fray on Tuesday evening. He missed out at the weekend against his parent club due to a clause in his loan contract.

Adam Stansfield, who was deployed as a loan striker for most of the game against Charlton, will be looking to hold down his first team place, with Richard Logan and Barry Corr both knocking at the door and given Tisdale plenty of options.

Over at the Swindon camp, I would have thought there is some possibility of a change of attacking personnel following as Swindon were left to rue a whole host of missed chances against Wycombe. Lee Peacock has played a couple of 2nd string fixtures to regain match fitness and with a busy schedule now looks as likely time as ever for Wilson to re-introduce him to the first team, even if it is just a substitute appearance.

Tope Obadeyi, Billy Paynter and Alex Revell will all be hoping they did enough on Saturday to keep at bay the likes of Peacock and Celtic-loanee Ben Hutchinson. Wilson has also had a lot of praise recently for two of his younger lads. Left-back Callum Kennedy will be hoping for a chance ahead of Jean-Francois Lescinel and Lloyd Macklin has been wholly impressive in the few substitute appearances he has made this term. Macklin is a natural striker but can also be deployed in midfield.

Pacey winger Alan O'Brien, who is yet to hit the ground running in a Swindon shirt, is still sidelined with a hamstring injury.

As a Swindon fan, I think we will be turning up at St. James Park expecting 3 points. We have a good run of results behind us - 8 games unbeaten but have failed to win in the last 3. We will be hoping that Exeter will be the breaking of our 1-1 draws, hopefully going our way. We find ourselves in 7th position. Our attacking football has everything there except clinical finishing. If our strikers, whoever Wilson decides to go with, can find their feet in front of goal we can expect to score a few, as the supply and threat is there.

I think the next 7 days could be a turning point in the season. Early as it is, I think if we are going to challenge for playoffs, Exeter's and Brentford's are teams we should definitely be getting 3 points against. No offence intended, this is based on the fact they are both League 1 new boys. Ideally, we should have got 3 points at the weekend also, and the majority of the rest of our results will suffice.