Ballinamallard manager Gavin Dykes has welcomed the news that many of the club’s high profile players have signed new contracts with the club. 
James McKenna, Johnny Lafferty and Adam Lecky have all penned new deals, with the manager also revealing that Jason McCartney, David Elliott and Ryan Morris are also set to sign for the upcoming season.
“Lecky and Lafferty have both agreed to stay which I am delighted about,” he said. 
“They both had better offers to go elsewhere but decided to stay which was great and I can’t speak highly enough about them. James McKenna was considering retirement and I had to talk him out of it. I think he is a very important player. He is a great club man and he has a great attitude. We are also close to getting deals done with Jason McCartney, Ryan Morris and David Elliott. I’m particularly delighted the young lads have agreed to stay. They are great lads and they are the sort of players the club should have.”
Gavin expects those deals to be followed by more, with most of the current squad happy to turn out for the Mallards for another season.
 “I have spoken to just about everybody in the current squad and the majority have indicated that they want to stay, which is a good sign,” said Gavin. 
“Some people we will be keeping and others I might have to let go. Naturally enough we need some new faces but we also need to integrate some of the younger lads into the squad. I think that is very important and its part of the reason I took the job. The majority of the players we want have more or less agreed so it’s just a matter of crossing the Ts and dotting the Is.”
The two big names to have left the club in the close season so far have been central defender Emmett Friars and goalkeeper Alvin Rouse. Both players were key in keeping Ballinamallard in the Premier League, but Dykes revealed that the decision not to renew their contracts was largely down to budget constraints. “It was a financial decision as much as anything else,” he admitted. “The two lads would have liked to stay but we have to work with the budget we have. They have been two great servants for the club, Alvin especially, but you have to cut your cloth from the cloth you have.”
As well as signing up members of the current squad the new boss has also been proactive in sourcing new players, mainly from the League of Ireland, and he is confident he will soon be able announce some new signings. “We have spoken to another goalkeeper, we have spoken to an outside right, we have spoken to a front player and we have spoken to a centre half,” he revealed. “They are all new people and hopefully they might be able to come in with us over the next few days and weeks. There are a lot of things that need to fall into place. They need to get out of contracts they are in which isn’t always easy and might be difficult for some of them, but they have indicated they want to come so we will see. It’s going to be challenging to get a squad together but we will do it. We have an awful lot of irons in the fire at the minute.”
Gavin has said that selling Ballinamallard to the potential new signings has been an easy task, but the difficulty lies with getting their current clubs to release them midway through their season. “A lot of the lads I’m talking to fancy playing in the Irish League because it is something different for them, and it’s an attraction that it is winter football,” he explained. “That can be a difficulty because it is the middle of their season and getting out and away from clubs can be difficult because a club isn’t going to let them go unless they have someone to replace them, but there will be a lot of movement and I’m confident we will definitely get a few in.”
Ballinamallard’s first fixture of the season will be revealed today (Thursday), and although the new manager does not mind who he gets in his first competitive game, he admits he would prefer to start the campaign at Ferney Park.
“I would like to start at home, but whoever we get it will be a difficult game,” he said. “We start back to pre-season, or as some of the players call it an extension of the current season, on Thursday for fitness tests. Then we have to slowly build them up to the kick off on 6th August. We are looking forward to it. There is a bit of a buzz about the place already.”