JEFF Roberts admits that he wasn’t anticipating the magnitude of the rebuilding job needed at Highworth Town this summer.

Roberts is the new man in charge of the Worthians after former boss John Fisher retired at the end of last term but the land lies a little differently at the Elms nowadays, with just one Highworth man – Tony Joyce – opting to sign back on for this season.

A swathe of players, many of whom were part of the side that reached the semi-finals of the FA Vase in 2014-15, have departed to join the likes of Royal Wootton Bassett Town and Fairford Town, and chief Roberts has been forced to bring in a glut of players that previously featured for him at Western League Corsham Town.

Highworth have also recruited former Swindon Supermarine men Ashley Edenborough, Ross Adams and Ryan Stanners but the Worthians manager is nonetheless preaching patience.

“I’d say that 99 per cent of the players that were here last year have left the club, with a lot of them going to Wootton Bassett – Tony Joyce is the only player that’s stayed,” said Roberts.

“That kind of thing can happen sometimes and you do expect players to move on and follow their mates to other clubs but we didn’t really expect to have to bring in a totally new side.

“We’ve brought in quite a few that were with us at Corsham last year, like Luke Hall-Cousins, Aysa Corrick, Fabian McCarthy, Keiron Gleed and Matty Jenkins but we also managed to bring in a few targets that have been at Supermarine.

“So it’s been a bit more of a rebuild than we’d hoped it would be but the chairman, Rohan (Haines) and Fraser (Haines, secretary) have been great to us.”

“Highworth is a big club around this area but we’ve told people that they need to be patient because it’s going to take time for this new team to gel together.”