Upbeat Jammers aim for FA Cup main draw

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow runs the club with his partner Scott

Maldon & Tiptree co-owner Barrie Drewitt-Barlow has set his sights on a place in the main draw of the FA Cup in his family's first full season of running the club.

The Jammers got as far as round two in 2019-20 and the first round the following year, when they lost to Morecambe 1-0.

They will host either Flackwell Heath or Bracknell Town, who meet in a replay on Tuesday, in the final qualifying round on 11 October.

"I'd never heard of Flackwell Heath before I went on Google to try and find out who they were," Drewitt-Barlow told BBC Essex Sport.

"In my head I was thinking I'd quite like the idea of it being Needham Market because that was the last team our manager Kevin (Horlock) managed - it would have been nice to have them because he really wants to play them at some point."

The Drewitt-Barlow Organisation completed a takeover of Maldon & Tiptree in February and spent the summer transforming the squad with a series of signings, including former West Ham and Colchester forward Freddie Sears.

They are second in Isthmian League North Division with 16 points from six matches and have already come through four rounds of the FA Cup, winning 4-2 at Waltham Abbey on Saturday, when Sears scored one of their goals.

"We're on fire at the moment. Our away support is growing in number week on week and we're getting hundreds more people through the gate (for home games)," Drewitt-Barlow said.

"In February, we were getting just short of a hundred or 120 people through the door and now we have the highest number in our league, we're having 1,000 or just over 1,000 going through the gate.

"This run at the moment is really encouraging people to come back to grassroots level football. People moan about the cost of going to Tottenham or West Ham, they can't afford those season tickets any more.

"We're giving people the option now to come and see really good players at grassroots level."

Drewitt-Barlow says Maldon & Tiptree's raised profile and success on the pitch is attracting the attention of players further up the football pyramid than those they have already signed.

"I'm now having conversations with players from much higher clubs than the players we've bought because they say 'we've seen what you're doing and we can see where you're going'," he added.

"We're getting a lot of interest, not just from the press and the local community, but from players up and down the country who are contacting Mitch [sporting director Mitch Cowling] every day of the week to see what we can perhaps offer them.

"The coming months will be really interesting if we can stay on the 'up' run we're on at the moment....I want to win in this business."

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow was speaking to BBC Essex's Warren Muggleton