“We’re aiming for the play-offs, no ifs or buts about it.”

Those are the words of Cinderford Town chairman Stuart Tait when he spoke to The Local Answer ahead of the new Southern League Division One South season.

And while it will take a significant improvement to reach the top six after last season’s 13th-placed finish, Tait was encouraged by the way Paul Michael’s team ended the previous campaign, taking 27 points from their final 14 games.

Tait is a big supporter of 32-year-old Michael, who has added goalkeeping and defensive coach Ryan Mackerness to his staff, and he said: “We’re probably the most positive we’ve been for a long time.

“We’ve kept everybody from last season and we’ve added to the squad, it’s looking very good.”

Last season was their first back at the level after relegation from the Premier Division the previous year and Tait added: “The biggest part of last season was to get a settling in period.

“To a certain extent we’d be happy with the same again but Paul and his assistant Andrew Smith’s recruitment has been so good that it has raised expectations – in a nice way, not in terms of pressure. It will be happy days if we make the play-offs.”

And while the football side of things would appear to be most definitely on an upward curve, Tait has certainly had to work hard to make sure that it is a similar story off the field.

It’s the role of the chairman to deal with problems as they come along and chief among them over the past couple of months was the FA’s decision to move them sideways into the Southern League’s Division One Central for the forthcoming season.

“That spooked us,” admitted Tait. “It would have increased our travelling, we’d have lost our management team and most of our players.

“It would have put us back to where we were 18 months ago. It made no sense. Fortunately commonsense prevailed and the decision was rectified.

“We were going to appeal but prior to the appeal it got sorted. In all it took about a week, it was a bit of fun and games!”

The football games start in mid-August and, as you’d expect, Tait is looking forward to the new campaign.

“We’re in a much better position than this time last season and we were in a much better position last season than the season before so there is improvement,” he said.

“The ground alterations aren’t happening quickly enough but we’ll get there.”

Those ground alterations include a new 3G pitch which Tait hopes will be in place for the start of the 2019/20 season, a new clubhouse and new changing rooms.

“The whole site will be upgraded,” added Tait.

The new pitch particularly excites Cinderford’s chairman who also doubles up as the club’s press officer.

“We are the most senior football club in South Gloucestershire and we want to be the flagship football club for the Forest,” said Tait.

“We can be the catalyst for other clubs to improve their facilities.

“Youth football in the Forest is incredible. We’ve got 300 youngsters in our youth set-up, Broadwell have got 200 and Lydney have got a good number too.

“But there’s a real struggle to find training pitches and a 3G pitch would get plenty of usage, it would be used by the community as a whole.”

On and off the pitch Tait is certainly not the type of person who likes to stand still.

“We’ve achieved a hell of a lot in a short period of time,” he said. “We need to continue that. I’m never a glass half empty person, I’m always a glass half full man.”

Cinderford Town supporters should say ‘cheers’ to that!