Wealdstone FC v Harrogate Town: Simon Weaver faces a selection headache
Harrogate Town will be aiming to back up their impressive opening-day victory over Solihull Moors when they visit Wealdstone this Saturday afternoon (3pm).
The Sulphurites’ 5-2 success, in what was their first competitive outing since they were relegated from League Two on the final day of last season, leaves them top of the National League after the opening round of 2026/27 fixtures.
And they will undoubtedly travel to North-West London full of confidence given the dominant nature of that performance, one which saw the vast majority of their summer signings hit the ground running.
Perhaps the only issue that manager Simon Weaver will have to contend with heading into his side’s first away outing of the new term is who to pick in his starting line-up, given how well everyone involved against Solihull showed up.
Ciaran McGuckin and Rohan Vaughan both scored after coming on as substitutes, while George Thomson produced with two assists from the bench, and a number of big players didn’t even make the match-day squad.
"I do have a few headaches in terms of selection,” Weaver told the Harrogate Advertiser.
“We have a powerful squad to choose from now and the performance levels in training and during the pre-season games made it very difficult to choose that starting XI for the opening day.
"But, we will rotate it around. We will freshen it up when we need to and look at each game individually. And Wealdstone will be a different test to Solihull.
“We have to consider each game on its merits. When we go away from home, we expect to have to mix it up a bit more, but we have worked hard on this game model during pre-season and don’t want to go too far away from what we saw on the opening day.”
Weaver will however once again be without two of his highest-profile summer signings, experienced centre-half Tom Lees, and attacking midfielder Josh Hmami.
"It's probably another couple of weeks for Josh. Tom will be three or four weeks at best,” the Town boss revealed.
“Tom has had an injection this week. Of course he would have wanted to be a presence on the pitch straight away, but it is a long season.
“We've got him for two years and don't want to rush him back because he's going to be a great presence."
In addition to Lees and Hmami, defender Grant Horton, central midfielder Ben Fox and winger Ellis Taylor also remained sidelined.
Wealdstone, meanwhile, are something of an unknown quantity as far as Town are concerned as the sides have never met before in a competitive fixture.
Last season, they finished 15th in the fifth tier, winning 15 and drawing 11 of their 46 league matches.
The Stones’ showing in 2025/26 was an improvement on the previous campaign, when they only narrowly avoided relegation to National League South.
While Town were busy smashing five past Solihull, Gary Waddock’s side kicked-off the new campaign with a 2-2 draw at AFC Flyde.
Having already fought back from a goal down, the Stones went 2-1 down late on, but managed to salvage a share of the spoils courtesy of Olufela Olomola’s 89th-minute strike.