WHILE he isn’t underestimating the size of the task ahead of his team, Witham Town manager Mark Ashford wants his players to embrace the challenge as they face a local derby FA Trophy tester at the Village Glass Stadium on Friday night.

Witham will host buoyant Coggeshall Town in a first qualifying round tie (kick-off 7.45pm) and a big crowd is expected under the floodlights for what will be the fourth meeting of the season between the two local rivals.

Coggeshall have already beaten Witham 2-0 in a Bostik League division north clash at West Street and they have also clashed in two FA Cup ties - the first being a 0-0 draw at Coggeshall before the Seedgrowers progressed with a 3-1 win in the replay at Witham.

They have since gone further and are now into the third qualifying round of the FA Cup after their 2-0 win against Walton Casuals last weekend, so will head into the Trophy game feeling buoyant.

However, Ashford insists that his players won’t shy away from the challenge of facing a side who are flying high and says they know what levels it takes to match their near neighbours.

He said: “The obvious thing is that we know what level we will have to be at to compete in the game.

“We had the draw at their place in the FA Cup when we did well and the players know the difference between them playing at that level and when they don’t play at that level.

“We’ve seen both against Coggeshall this year and we know how good they are as a team.

“They have a potentially exciting FA Cup tie to look forward to and they are winning games on merit so we are going to have to be at our best.

“It will be interesting to see what side they put out against us, but we know it will be a strong side because they have the resources to do that.

“We’ll have to be at the top of our game to take something from it.

“We can go into it in one of two ways - we can embrace it or we can shy away from it and I know we have to embrace it.

“From the three games we’ve had so far this season, we know what we are up against.

“They will be confident as they have beaten us twice and they are on a high, but sometimes you have your best games when you have to raise your performance.

“It is a challenge to us and one that we should rise to.

“We have to embrace it and see where it takes us.

“We have not had anyone steamroller us this year; we have been in every game so far.

“We should have a lot of belief because if we perform well and turn up right, we have shown we are able to compete with pretty much every team in our league.

“We have to put in a performance ourselves and what will be will be.”