MATCH PREVIEW : Thatcham Town v Burnham

This afternoon the Kingfishers take on Burnham in a Combined Counties Premier Division North fixture.

Thatcham have begun the league campaign with four points from three games, while Burnham have three points from two. Burnham began with a resounding 5-1 win at Abingdon United before being defeated 3-2 at home by Amersham United. Rafael Bertoli has scored four goals for them already this season.

·   In midweek, while Thatcham were drawing their first away game since March 2025 (2-2 at Wokingham), Burnham were in FA Cup action. Following a 1-1 draw at home to Slimbridge, they were beaten 2-1 in the replay over in Gloucestershire. Meanwhile the Kingfishers face a trip to Mangotsfield United in the Preliminary Round next weekend after overcoming Cinderford Town 5-1 last week.

·   Both teams have scored and conceded goals in each of their four games to date, so a goal-less draw doesn’t seem likely today!

·   The two sides played each other twice in the space of four days in April 2018. Liam Ferdinand scored a hat-trick in the away fixture as Thatcham won 6-0 at The Gore, and was on target twice in the 4-0 home win. That extended the Kingfishers’ unbeaten run to 34 games as they claimed at Hellenic League and FA Vase double, while Burnham finished bottom of the league.

·   The previous season Town won by 11-0 at Burnham with Shane Cooper-Clark scoring four and current captain Callum Willmoth bagging a hat-trick. Burnham were much improved in the rematch a couple of months later which produced a narrower 2-1 Thatcham win. Burnham completed a hat-trick of victories over Thatcham in 2012/13, one in the Berks & Bucks Senior Cup and two in the league as they went on to claim the Southern League D1 Central title.

Speaking in advance of the game, Town manager Cameron Philbey said,

“We have started the season with a fairly settled team. Against Penn & Tylers Green I was unhappy with the way we played, but we stuck with them against Bedfont and they put it right with a good showing. Since then we have beaten Cinderford and drawn at Wokingham.

We have a lot of good players to choose from and that gives us a nice problem to have. Of course some of the squad aren’t overly happy with the situation, but it’s refreshing to see the players who are in the team having to work hard to maintain their place.

The pitch at Wokingham was like many I’ve seen from up and down the country on highlights reels. Here at Thatcham we are spoiled thanks to the hard work Ray and Izzy put in on the pitch, with support from our own Charlie Heaver and Paul Sirey. Our opening games have been at home and on a wonderful surface at Penn & Tylers, but it took us a while to get going on Tuesday. However the pitch is not really an excuse, we should be able to cope with it at this level.

Five of our next six games are away from home - being drawn away in all four cup competitions hasn’t helped! Our away record wasn’t great last season and we have spoken about getting better at grinding out results – ‘if we don’t win then don’t lose’ – which happened too many times last season.

On Tuesday we were weak defensively and found ourselves two goals down early on. We showed good character to come back and could have won it, but really I was happy with a point based on the poor start we made.”