This weekend’s clash at the Goldstar Ground should attract plenty of interest with newly-promoted and new-look Stowmarket Town the visitors to Felixstowe for the two clubs’ opening league fixture of the season.

Both declined to play a league fixture before their FA Cup games last weekend so go head to head in this opener with many pundits having made them title favourites before a ball has been kicked.

Neither Stow’ manager Rick Andrews or the Seasiders management duo of Kevin O’Donnell and Ian Watson will take much notice of the pre-season pundits, knowing that with a 46 game season, there will be plenty of ups and downs along the way.

It’s a marathon not a sprint but this game will be important to both clubs with the home side having made a disastrous exit in the FA Cup last Saturday while Stowmarket cruised into the next round with a 4-0 win at Barkingside on Sunday.

Felixstowe & Walton added to their squad on Tuesday with the signature of experienced defender Taylor Hastings, who joined from Leiston FC.

Hastings was a youth team player with Great Wakering Rovers where he made over 100 senior appearances before moving to Enfield Town and subsequently Leiston and he goes straight into the squad for this game.

It will be a quick return for Ethan Clarke who played for the Seasiders for the last two seasons before joining Stowmarket in the summer.

While nothing will be decided from this game, which should attract plenty of interest from both sets of supporters, it will certainly put down a marker and neither club will want to be looking up at the other after the game.

The hosts have used the pre-season games to ‘live’ test their all new facilities and from the response so far it looks as though they could offer a springboard for bigger and better things, providing of course they can produce on the pitch, but visitors Stowmarket are also ambitious and will be equally keen to produce the right result from this game to set a marker!