Rose backing Hamlet to march on!

After the continuing exploits of former Ryman League champions Sutton United and Lincoln City in this season's Emirates FA Cup, Rose believes his Hamlet heroes can continue the trend at National League Braintree Town on Saturday in the third round of Non-League's showpiece cup competition.

Hamlet haven't reached the third round for 33 years since playing Northwich Victoria in 1984 and victory in Essex would equal their best-ever run in the competition in 1980 when the South Londoners reached the quarter-finals before being beaten by Boston United after a replay.

Despite history being against Hamlet and their underdog status, Rose, pictured, reckons they have every chance of overcoming a club two leagues above them to bank a cheque for £7,000 in prize money and a place in Monday morning's quarter-final draw at Wembley.

To get this far his side have already beaten Chesham United, Lowestoft Town, Winchester City, Royston Town and Whitehawk in the last round and he told the thefa.com: "Why not? We enter the cup competitions wanting to pit ourselves against the teams that are higher up than us. So this is an adventure and we just want to see how far we can go and how high a level we can compete at as a team.

“I don’t let my players worry about playing teams above us, as they have the belief we can play higher than they level we’re at currently. We’ve had a few clubs at Braintree’s level give us some match reports. We are very respectful of them, because they have a good manager and some very experienced players. But there’s been some massive upsets in the FA competitions of late and there’s no reason we can’t be a team that adds to that.”

Rose added: "We’re here to break down some boundaries and go further than we ever have done before as a club. It means a lot to the players and myself. That can set a new mentality within the club and an expectation that we can go to loftier heights within the Non-League pyramid. There’s no reason we can’t take the next step.”

Image courtesy of the thefa.com

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