“He’ll have a fry up in the morning and a bag of Haribos on the way here,” says Fakenham boss on free-scoring frontman

Fakenham Town boss Alex Walpole has revealed striker Jake Watts’ recipe for terrorising defences this season – a fry-up and a packet of Haribos on the way to a game.Watts failed to score for only the second time this season during Saturday’s 2-1 home defeat to Woodbridge Town in the Thurlow Nunn Premier Division.But the frontman has been beefing up his goal tally regularly since a ball was first kicked and already has 26 goals in 18 games to his name.The prolific Watts is already closing in on Gary Setchell’s club record of 49 league and cup goals and also has one eye on the overall Thurlow Nunn scoring record.Walpole said: “I tell you what, I think science study needs to be done on him because I’ve never seen somebody look after themselves so poorly but manage to run non-stop all game, jump, sprint, tackle, twist and turn as he does.”He is a freak of nature. He’ll have a fry up in the morning and a bag of Haribos on the way here, a couple of monsters and I dread to be looking at his insides, but he doesn’t stop running.”For me, he sets the tone for a lot of what we do and he’s absolutely loving it. “His two boys were here watching him today and they both play in the youth set-up. The crowd love him, everyone loves him so he’s going to have some up and down days but he will always have us supporting him.” After firing a blank at the weekend, Walpole is confident his top scorer will be back for second helpings during two important games for the club this week.”He is scoring an average of three goals every two games so I think today he is one of the first, but even then he’s had a few snap chances and on another day he probably scores again.”The goalkeeper has made an unreal save from a deflected shot so we would have been calling it an own goal anyway but he’s made an incredible save there which would have brought it back to 2-2. “But look, we can’t put too much on him. Four or five years ago, he was playing in Crown and Fire and he’s stepped up and been brilliant for us.”I think sometimes he gets frustrated, but then I just have to think and look at how much good he’s done.” The Fakenham boss is looking for a response from his players against Dussindale in the Norfolk Senior Cup tomorrow night before returning to league action with a trip to Cornard on Saturday.”We’ve got Dussindale in the Norfolk Senior Cup, which would be great to bounce back in and we’re looking forward to that,” he said. “Obviously, the Senior Cup is something that we haven’t done well in for a while now, since Wayne (Anderson) was in charge we haven’t been there at Carrow Road so we feel like we’ve got a good opportunity this year.”That’s our first chance to bounce back then we are at Cornard on Saturday. We went there for the second game of the season and lost 3-0 in the FA Cup.”We know that that’s going to be a tough one and we’ve shared our frustrations with the players today, but I also believe in every single one of them.”I’m confident that Wednesday we will react positively and Saturday the players know they’re gonna have to react positively as well.” Walpole set his players a target of 68 points before the start of the campaign and the second-placed Ghosts are already halfway there.”I set 68 points at the start of the season, that was my target, so after 19 games we needed to have 34 points,” he said.”We’ve played 16 and got 34 so we’re three games ahead of schedule but we know we’ve got a difficult second-half of the season to come.”Whoever does the fixtures at the Thurlow Nunn has been very kind to us as we’ve avoided Downham, Thetford, Brantham, Mulbarton and Derham so there are 12 games there which will decide essentially who will finish where in the top seven. “I think as long as we can get half the amount of points out of those 12 games, 18 points out of 36, I think that’ll be good because throughout the season everyone’s going to take results off everyone.”I think a lower amount of points will get us to 68 and I’d like to think we’ll be top three but there is still a long way to go yet.”We know we’ve got good enough players, but I always talk about the other side of the game. Have we got enough players who want to when times get tough when it’s back to the wall?”Last week when we were at Harleston we saw that. It was backs to the wall, proper old school, and a 1-0 win away from home. “Everyone defended for their lives and was at it, first or second ball, but today we weren’t. which is why we’ve lost.”But I’d like to think when it comes to it and when we need it most these players will rise to the occasion.”