Witham Town manager Garry Kimble is concerned that he won’t have a war chest capable of staging a fight to stay in the Ryman League premier division next season.

With the promotion party of their division one north play-off success still fresh in the memory, Kimble admits he is having nervous thoughts about the challenge ahead.

He said the gulf in quality between the two divisions is huge and feels the playing budget that got them promoted will have to be vastly increased for them to avoid a quick return to the lower level.

Kimble said: “We need players with the experience of playing at that level or we will quickly be back in division one north and I don’t want to go back down.

“The club have to understand that we are in a big league now.

“There are clubs pumping up to £15,000 a week into their playing budgets and we just can’t compete with that.

“The gulf is massive and it does worry me."

See the paper this week for the full version of this story.