DORCHESTER Sports have signed five new players ahead of their opening Dorset Premier League clash at Holt United tomorrow (3pm).

Sports have lured Portland defender Sam Clarke, Blues’ midfielder Darren Watts, former Portland right-back Ash Smith plus ex-Dorchester striker Alex Stafie and former Piddlehinton man Adam Wash.

Commenting on Sports’ new faces, boss Ashley James said: “All of them are really positive signings and if we can get them all out on the pitch at any given time it’s going to give us a massive boost.

“It’s already given us a boost, we’ve had a good pre-season, everyone’s chipped in and we’re confident for today.”

On the challenge of Holt, James added: “We’ve beaten them the last two years 1-0 away from home.

“But you never quite know what they’re doing pre-season, it’ll be completely unknown and they’ve lost Nathan Saxby to Merley, which is a massive blow because he used to score 40 goals a season.”

Meanwhile, Balti Sports’ boss Marco Nott has focused on signing young talent during the summer in the run-up to the Weymouth outfit’s curtain-raiser with Blandford at Weymouth College (3pm).

Jack Drummond, Stef Stavrianos and former Portland youngster Che Curran have all joined forces with the men in yellow.

Nott said: “There wasn’t too much wrong with our squad, how it was. We need to get a few players back available and we’ve done that.

“We’ve had quite a strong pre-season with regards to results, we’ve won every game apart from Christchurch where we lost 2-1 – we look pretty good.

“We just want to start playing proper matches now and we’re looking forward to getting back into the league campaign.”

Balti are without Charlie Kenderdine and Ricky Lane (both unavailable) plus Curran who starts a three-game ban. Ryan Ross is the sole absentee for Dorchester Sports.