Guernsey will have Southall as a new opponent next season with the Isthmian League having confirmed its allocations for 2022-23.
The West London side were promoted from the North Division of the Combined Counties Premier League, having finished second this season. They celebrated their 150th annivesary last year and groundshare with Ashford Town.
Reuniting with the Green Lions are Leatherhead and Merstham, who have been relegated from the Isthmian Premier Division, and Walton & Hersham, who won the Combined Counties Premier League South Division, the league in which Jersey Bulls compete.
Leatherhead beat GFC 3-2 in the play-off semi-final in 2014 in our first season at this level. They went on to win promotion and have been in the Premier Division ever since, until finishing in the dropzone this campaign.
Merstham won promotion just a year later, also via the play-offs, and inflicted the Green Lions’ record defeat, 8-0, on their way up. But they are back down at Step Four having finished bottom of the Premier Division.
Walton & Hersham are back up having been relegated in 2016, with Guernsey winning four of the six meetings when they previously shared a division. We will be visiting a different ground to the one at which Dave Rihoy scored GFC’s 500th goal though, with the Swans having moved across town in 2017.
The third promoted side takes us way back to 2013, Hanworth Villa, whom we faced twice on the way to promotion from the Combined Counties Premier Division. Vance’s men were beaten 2-1 away before taking revenge with a 5-1 thumping at home. Rihoy scored his only Green Lions hat-trick that evening. Both games came during the Sarnians’ incredible fixture congestion that season.
The fixtures will be released in July.
