TOM Killick is eager to keep his Dorchester Town squad together for the 2024/25 season to harness what he believes is “an awful lot of potential”.

Killick has guided Dorchester from the clutches of the bottom four to a top-half team just outside the Pitching In Southern League Premier South play-offs this season.

He has blended a number of key signings from former club Poole Town with the young and existing talent at the Magpies, plus three superb loan signings in Ed James, Ollie Haste and Jameson Horlick.

While James, Haste and Horlick will return to Exeter, Yeovil and Luton respectively this summer, Killick believes the addition of “meaningful” players can lead to another positive season.

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He told Echosport: “I suppose the big question is that you’d like to try and keep the group together. I hope that they recognise that there is an awful lot of potential.

“I hope they recognise that there’s certainly an opportunity, in my view, to do well next season but we need to stay together.

“Hopefully people will show some loyalty and have a bit of belief in what we can do.

“It’s inevitable you’re going to lose Ed and Jameson, for a start.

“But, if we can keep the vast majority, and you’ve already started thinking about acquisitions, if we can get two or three really meaningful people through the door on top of what we’ve got then there’s a lot of reasons to be positive.

“But you can’t get carried away, it’s just a very difficult league. You can see some of the teams that are in the bottom reaches, the resources they’ve got and the position they’re in.

“There’s probably going to be at least one or two very well-resourced teams that go out of the league, so it’s tough from top to bottom.

“I’ve said that perhaps the quality at the top has diminished a little bit but the quality at the bottom has improved, so it’s just a very difficult league.

“As much as you can go on a brilliant run like we’ve been on, we’ve seen other teams (that are) well-resourced with a lot of good players that can see the other side of it.

“I don’t want anyone to get carried away, I want people to enjoy what’s happening at the moment. I do believe there’s reason for some positivity but also realism.”