EP boss Di Paola hails amazing season

EP were unable to sign off with their 30th league win of the season – as three of their players left the field injured in their 3-3 draw against Steyning Town, and two ended up in hospital – but Di Paola said: “It’s been an amazing season and we’ve shown good focus throughout.

“We had the five games in eight days over Christmas and showed great focus throughout the season to do a great job. The cup final win over Littlehampton crowned the season off and everyone at the club is on a high.

“Now, we’ve just got to hope the majority of the players stay. I know that at least four of my players have been phoned by other managers already, as the players have told me, but I’ve not really spoke to too many players about next season yet. I’d like to think that, as we’ve had a great season, most of them will stay, but you never know.”

EP won the title with 29 victories from their 34 league games, while they also lifted the Division 2 Cup. They rattled in 124 goals in their 34 league games, conceding 34.

George Gaskin is the division’s top scorer with 37 goals, three ahead of Hailsham’s Danny Leach – who still has one game to play – and Gaskin netted 45 goals in all competitions.

Charlie Oatway also found the net on a regular basis with 34 goals, captain Joe Shelley netted 23 and Matt Axell and Alex Duncan also reached double figures, with 11 and 10 respectively.

Di Paola is now looking forward to playing in Division 1 and said: “A lot of teams just seemed really fired up when they played us this season – whether they wanted to try to prove a point, I don’t know, but Sam Corkhill suffered a broken bone in the back of his leg on Saturday after a bad challenge and now he’ll be off work for six weeks.

“It really was a stupid tackle and I don’t understand why players do that. But a few teams have been like that in this division – over-aggressive, shouting and screaming, turning up thinking it’s their cup final. It’s not a dig at Steyning, it’s just my general observation of how things have been this season as teams get frustrated when we dominate possession.

“In Division 1, I don’t think we’ll have that so much. We won’t be a big fish and are light years behind the top five, six, seven sides in Division 1 in terms of budget and stature.

“We’ve only been in Division 1 for six or seven years in our history, so we won’t get signalled out for attention so much – teams in the east of the county aren’t going to care about East Preston.

“It will also be nice to not have quite so many derby matches as we had a lot this season and it will be just Arundel next year.”