Play-off experience could be crucial

HATTERS have a wealth of play-off experience heading into their Conference final against York City on Sunday, writes Mark Wood.

Manager Paul Buckle’s success at Torquay is well known, but Town also boast technical director Lil Fuccillo, who led Peterborough to victory on May 24, 1992, when the play-offs were very much in their infancy.

Posh beat Stockport County in the Third Division play-off final 2-1 to gain promotion to the new First Division.

Luton’s technical director said: “I was given the task of taking the team out at Wembley. We beat Stockport 2-1. It was quite new, we were only the second or third team to go there.

“Paul is a Wembley winner, I’ve been at Wembley with the play-offs. I succeeded and it was a lovely feeling.

“It would be fantastic for the board because they’ve been through a lot of emotions in the last three or four years.”

Fuccillo admitted that York could have an advantage having just played at Wembley on Saturday beating Newport County 2-0 in the FA Trophy final, but didn’t feel Luton should be daunted.

He said: “The one thing is when you’ve played somewhere and seen all the pitfalls.

“They’ve had success so it was great for them from start to finish.

“Some of us have never played there and probably never been there.

“We’ve got a good strikeforce with (Andre) Gray and (Stuart) Fleetwood and one or two will who can come off the bench.

“There are goals in the team, we should be quietly confident.”

But it also gave boss Buckle the chance to do his reconnaissance on the Minstermen, as Fuccillo said: “We’ve had some good games against them but not enough. I think we’ve learned enough about them and watched them on Saturday.

“Paul will have made a few notes on that and know what their weaknesses are.”

Fuccillo also predicted Saturday’s game would have no bearing on this one, saying: “It’s a completely different game to what they played the week before. There’s more at stake.

“Everyone wants to play in the Football League and that’s our aim. We will look at it from a positive point of view and they probably will as well.

“We should go out there with confidence, but not over-confidence.

“We’ve got to earn the right to play on Sunday and that will let us play our flowing football that we can.

“The pitch will be lovely and something we would like to play on every week surface-wise.”

While Fuccillo believes you can prepare for the challenges sides pose in regular season games, he thinks one-off games are far more unpredictable.

He added: “In any given day you can always do things and be prepared.

“But when you have got a one-off game at Wembley it becomes a little bit different. We don’t know how York are going to approach it.

“If they’ve got a plan B and are hurting us we might need to change.

“When it’s a cup final it’s a one-off game and things become a little bit different.”