Town open doors to new era
Shrewsbury Town enter a bright new chapter in their history tomorrow when the New Meadow throws open its doors for the first time for the visit of the A-Line All-Stars. Shrewsbury Town enter a bright new chapter in their history tomorrow when the New Meadow throws open its doors for the first time for the visit of the A-Line All-Stars. The star-studded line-up of the club's kit suppliers will be managed by Ron Atkinson and skippered by Gianfranco Zola, with Gustavo Poyet, Gianluca Festa, Christian Karembeu, Graeme Le Saux, Les Ferdinand and Paul Merson all featuring. Former Shrewsbury aces Mickey Brown and Steve Cross will also appear for the All-Stars. Gary Peters is taking the game seriously, and will be fielding the strongest line-up available to him. Read the full story in today's Shropshire Star
The star-studded line-up of the club's kit suppliers will be managed by Ron Atkinson and skippered by Gianfranco Zola, with Gustavo Poyet, Gianluca Festa, Christian Karembeu, Graeme Le Saux, Les Ferdinand and Paul Merson all featuring.
Former Shrewsbury aces Mickey Brown and Steve Cross will also appear for the All-Stars.
Peters is taking the game seriously, and will be fielding the strongest line-up available to him, including all of his new signings except for the injured David Hunt.
Darren Moss has missed training this week after picking up a knock, but the Town boss is hopeful he will be able to appear in the eagerly-anticipated fixture.
"It's the most exciting time in the club's history to be a fan," said Peters.
"There's been no other time anywhere near as exciting as this - this sort of thing only happens once every 100 years.
"The last few months have been one high after another.
"A year ago we were going to leave Gay Meadow and that was going to be the big highlight of the season with the last game against Grimsby.
"But that almost paled into insignificance in the end with us ending up at Wembley and having 23,000 fans behind us. Now we've got the new ground.
"The most season tickets we'd ever sold was last year but we might double that this year. People are excited, and so they should be."
Peters is also pledging to serve up a more eye-catching brand of football on the improved surface they will now have under their feet, though he is warning supporters not to expect too much too soon.
"It's a bigger pitch and that'll give us the chance to get the ball down and pass it. We can get it out wide to the wingers and hurt the opposition," he said.
"We were a reasonably direct side before because of the pitch but we're not going to go from that to being Arsenal overnight.
"But I can promise it's going to be different to the way we used to do it."
* Town fans are being encouraged to use a new Express Service being laid on by the club to get them to the stadium tomorrow.
The service, which is being run by Tanat Valley, will start from Raven's Meadow Bus Station at 12.30pm and continue at 15-minute intervals until 2.30pm.
The service costs £3 for adults and £2 for children, with the first bus returning to Raven's Meadow at 5.05pm.
By Chris Hudson