North Leigh manager Mark Gee says there is no reason his side can’t emulate Cirencester Town and go up via the Division 1 South & West play-offs.

Their campaign starts at home to Taunton on Saturday.

“I regard Cirencester as the yardstick. And if they can do it, then we can do it,” said Gee, whose side finished tenth last term.

“I don’t think they were the third best team in the league, but they got themselves into the play-offs and won promotion.

“We had a bad two months with the bad weather and if that hadn’t happened we would probably have finished in the top-six.

“I thought we were equally as good as Cirencester. We matched them, although they sneaked a few results against us.

“They are similar to us in that they are hard-working. They had some dips, but they stayed in there.”

Defender Simon Futcher has been ruled out for at least five months as he is soon to have an operation on his troublesome Achilles.

And to make matters worse, striker Matty Taylor returned from holiday in Magaluf with bacterial meningitis. That saw him spend a week in hospital.

They are also without Kieran Sanders (virus), Toby Clarke, Jamie Gosling (from Hungerford), and Stuart Huxley, who are on holiday, while keeper Richard Barrett and Reardon are at Karl Dodds’s wedding in Norway.

Ben Reardon should return from a broken toe.