Jed-Forest head coach has 'must do' target for season

Ex-Hawick, Melrose and Gala head coach Johnson, appointed at Riverside Park in April, will lead Jed into the new National 1 campaign this Saturday when they visit Biggar for a 3pm kick-off.

He told the Southern Reporter: “I’ve had a conversation with people at the club and they just want to avoid the bottom three at all costs. That’s the main objective.

"With a 12-team league and a quarter of the clubs going down, it’s tough. Clubs just can’t afford to go down another league. You’ve seen that previously with Gala. They went down from the Prem to Nat 1 and then Nat 2.

"Boroughmuir did it the last few years, going from Nat 1 to Nat 2 and Nat 3. So we need to stay in Nat 1.

"From mine and the players’ point of view, we’re all really ambitious.

“So we want to get as high up the league as possible.

"Ideally we would want to be competing at the top end.

"But let’s just see how the first four or five weeks go and then we’ll get a better gauge of where we’re at.

"I think if you even spoke to most of the Premiership clubs they’ll be saying exactly the same thing, get off to a decent start and then re-evaluate.”

When asked if he feels that having 25% of the teams in Nat 1 being relegated at the end of the season is very harsh, Johnson replied: “Yes it is, especially when there’s only one going up.

"I think if you had one coming up and a play-off between whoever is second top of Nat 2 and fourth bottom of Nat 1, it might make it a bit more palatable.

"There’s not an easy answer but three down is rough, especially when they want to go back to 10-team leagues just to reduce games.

"But Nat 1 finishes on February 8, so I don’t see why, when we’re finishing as early as that, that you need to reduce it down to a 10-team league.

"A 10-team league would effectively mean four games less for each team so we’d be finishing in mid-January instead.

"There are obviously reasons for it, but it is very harsh having three down.

"I know why the authorities are doing it and there is no other way around it unfortunately.

"If you win our league you go up, if you finish in the bottom three you go down, and then you’ve got eight other teams sitting there just remaining where they are.”