IT’S going to be a big few days for everyone at the club with tomorrow’s home clash against Exeter City followed by a massive FA Youth Cup tie against MK Dons for the under-18s on Tuesday night.

With my coaching role with the youngsters this season I have to say that my main focus over the past few days has been preparing the boys for the cup game at Rodney Parade.

It’s the biggest match that they’ll have played in so far and I’ve told them that for some of them it will be the biggest game they ever play in because not all of them will make it as a professional.

That might sound harsh but I think you have to be realistic and not give some of these kids false hope.

I took them down to Shaftesbury Park in Newport yesterday for a bit of a trial match and I told them if they don’t keep their standards up they’ll have to get used to playing on parks pitches.

Having said all that I am genuinely optimistic that we can get past MK and that would mean we get to play Nottingham Forest youth at the City Ground in the next round so that would be an even bigger game.

We’ve looked at the clips of MK and we know that they’ve scored a lot of goals and we’ve conceded far too many.

But I’m confident that we can go through if we cut out the stupid errors that are costing us goals.

We’ve postponed the boys’ home game against Cheltenham this morning so that they can train today and Monday to prepare as best they can.

But it’s not all been hard work – I rewarded them with a trip to Pizza Hut after training yesterday and that was a really good team bonding exercise.

The lads all enjoyed themselves and fellow coach Danny Elliott ate his own weight in pizza!

The trial match also gave me plenty to think about because there are still a few places up for grabs so I’ll have some tough decisions to make on team selection.

I’m really hoping that we will have a good crowd at Rodney Parade on Tuesday night for the 7pm kick-off.

The Bisley Stand will be open and it’s only £5 for adults and £1 for under-16s.

The fans have seen the likes of Regan Poole, Aaron Collins and Tom Owen-Evans involved with the senior team and this is a great chance to see the rest of the youngsters and possibly some of the future stars for us in the Football League.

Before that though it’s a big weekend for the first team and I know the players are all looking forward to playing at home again after a couple of weeks on the road.

We were all disappointed to lose at Luton in the FA Cup but I felt we went about the game in the right way and showed great spirit to get back level at 2-2.

It’s just a shame that we conceded a few soft goals and ended up going out of a brilliant competition.

Luton are a top side and will definitely be one of the clubs challenging for promotion to League One this season.

A few of their players came up to me as we were walking off at Kenilworth Road and said we were the best side they’ve played this season.

At the time I didn’t really want to hear that but it shows that we gave them a good battle and hopefully we can continue our good run in the league tomorrow.

Exeter will be desperate to make amends after they were dumped out of the cup by Warrington Town and they’re very close to us in the League Two table so it will be a tough task.

But, like with the youngsters, if we cut out the errors at the back I think we can get the win that could lift us into those play-off places once again.