Banbury United manager Billy Jeffrey has hailed the emergence of his youngsters and wants them to keep up the good work next season.

Although disappointed with their 12th-place finish, Jeffrey was delighted with the displays of his younger players.

Declan Benjamin, Marvin Martin, Nabil Shariff and Ainsley McDonald, Joe Coleman, Jack Ashton and Adam Learoyd all completed their first seasons in the Zamaeretto Soutehrn League Premier Division.

Before the campaign started, Banbury were dealt a huge blow when central defender Luke Bennett suffered a cruciate knee ligament injury – for the third time in a friendly at Stamford.

“I think we have had a good season, if you consider where we were at the start, “ said Jeffrey.

“We were struggling to get players and then Luke was ruled-out for the season.

“So we decided to go with a younger side.

“Mickey Lewis was very helpful in letting us have Declan and Marvin and my old club Rushden loaned us Nabil and Ainsley.

“Joe came out of the youth team, Jack Ashton was playing in the United Counties League and Adam Learoyd (from Wantage) did well.

“Because they are young they are going to make mistakes, but they have to learn from those mistakes to enable them to become better players.

“Half way through the season we were right up there, in the play-off positions, but we lost our momentum with the bad weather.”

Jeffrey added: “We need to defend better as a team because we dominated games, but let ourselves down with silly mistakes. Attacking-wise we were fine.”

Didcot Town manager Stuart Peace says there will be a clear-out of players following their dismal end to their Premier Division campaign.

After securing their status for next season, they lost their last seven games.

“I would split the season into three sections,” said Peace who has yet to decide on his future at the club.

“The first was very competitive and we lost six games by the odd goal, although we didn’t get the rub of the green.

“The second when we found our feet and put together a good run, and the third section where we finished very poorly.

“I feel that some of the players haven’t performed to the level required while others excelled. Matt Trott, Alex Stanley and Jamie Heapy did well.

“Mark Draycott performed well in the early part with his goals, and that’s about it.

“We have lacked consistency. We knew it would be difficult to stay in the league, but there needs to be a radical change in personnel in the summer.

Peace added: “Whoever is in charge – it may well be me, needs to do a lot of work in the summer and I have to decide whether I want to do that.”

Oxford City manager Mike Ford said his side need an experienced defender at the back if they are to finish at the top end of the table next term.

He said: “The Achilles heel has been our defence. We have scored 60 goals, but our goals-against column was 67.

“We were great going forwards, but we when sides came at us we didn’t defend.

“Although I don’t think we were the same after January when Andy Baird retired.”

“The highlight was our FA Cup run where we reached the first round for the first time in ten years.

“We did ever so well at Burton, but we conceded that 96th-minute goal. It’s a shame that we didn’t push on.

Andy Slater says he has left Abingdon United in a healthy state.

Slater who left due to personal reasons said: “ I’m not leaving a struggling club. There are some good players to work with here.

“I thought we had cracked it at Christmas when we were something like second in the league, but the poor weather killed us.”

North Leigh boss Mark Gee whose side finished tenth, said: “I’m not happy with the points total, but with the injuries we had, it’s what we achieved last year.

“The best aspect was developing youngsters like Matty Taylor, Adam Lonsdale, Aaron Posey and Keiron Saunders, who have been great.”