HAMMERS boss Tim Sills believes the fact he has been able to keep the majority of his squad together after promotion is testament to what Hamworthy United are “building”.

Sills led Hamworthy to the Wessex Premier League title last term, and whilst the Southern League Division One South has a wider footprint than the ninth-tier league they leave behind, there are numerous local faces.

Former Wessex clubs Lymington, Sholing, Wimborne, and Totton will be new opponents, whilst Bashley followed the Hammers up into the Southern League via promotion.

Bashley, Wimborne and Totton have been very active in the market, whilst Hammers have had to make do with a slightly more modest budget.

Sills told the Daily Echo: “There's no getting away from that.

“I mean, last year, I thought we did extremely well to retain most of what we had the year before. It wasn’t a big budget last year, and I'm quite happy to say that.

“Every manager will say that and you can either believe it or not, but ultimately I know what some budgets were and we were much below that.

“This year, you look at it again, some of them, they take it up another level.

"You hear about the money that's going around. It's absolutely incredible.

“The fact that we've still managed to retain as many as we have because they believe in what we've got.

“In fact, we've added quality from players who have come away from those clubs because they just really want to kind of enjoy it and get in a really good environment.

“It's testament to the club and what we're building.

“So, like I say, yeah, we'll definitely be in the smaller budgets in the league, but it doesn't hold us back.

“But we showed last year that we didn't need the biggest budget to go out and dominate most games.”

With six clubs in a somewhat local area of Dorset and Hampshire, there is overlap when it comes to recruitment, as evident by Hammers drafting in wingers Curtis Young and Sam Griffin from Wimborne and Totton respectively.

When asked if there was a feeling of local rivalries with the close proximity to other clubs, Sills replied: “Yeah, not particularly.

“I mean, none of them are particularly local, obviously Wimborne is probably the most local, but I couldn't hope to compete with what they're spending over there. So, fair play.

“It's a great set up there and they spent very well from what I can see.

“But for us, we've got to work within our means, we're quite happy with that.

“We're not competing with anyone other than ourselves because we know that if we're on it and we do what we did last year, then we'll give a good account of ourselves again this season.”