The most unfortunate AFCB player of last season

If you remember we had a few difficulties at the start of last season. While Ryan Allsop was finding the Championship a big step up, Eddie Howe signed the West Ham shot stopper Stephen Henderson on 3 October and it looked like he would be on loan until the January window. But all that changed when he dislocated his shoulder at Nottingham Forest and he has been out of action ever since.

Stephen Henderson before Millwall home game.

I have scoured the news to see if anything has been written on Stephen since then, but there are no reports of an update on how his recovery has been going - perhaps some West Ham fans can tell us. Still I did see that he is on the retained list of players at West ham so he should be looking to get back into action during pre-season. While Henderson's season went very wrong at the City ground it is something that can happen in the game and if it had not taken place it is probable that Lee Camp would never have come to the Cherries. So in so many ways the Forest away match was one of the biggest turning points of last season for AFCB. It was great to be there and to see the team get that late, late equaliser scored by Marc Pugh. Whether the injury to Henderson inspired the team or not it was quite a day for away supporters.

Henderson has been retained by West Ham.

The lingering thoughts though were with Henderson. He had spent just 16 days on the south coast and his season was over. Unlucky, I think we can say. 

World Cup Chimes
As you probably know, England play an important friendly tonight against Peru so World Cup Chimes checks out Peru's top players. I have also registered on the FIFA Fantasy league sponsored by MacDonalds - You can register on this link but you can't choose a squad until 8 June when I hope I can also set up a Chimes league for AFCB fans who want to take part. It's free to enter and I am looking forward to seeing if I can pick a better squad than you!

New pitches
Meanwhile, in the last few days we have been told that new pitches are being prepared at Dean Court and at the training ground so that they will be ready for the new season. Without any prompting, my good friend Michael Dunne of All Departments took it upon himself to go down to Kings Park and do some investigating for all of us. Here are his pictures.

 

The training pitches need a bit of work. Good job the lads are off to Austria soon.