‘Sickener’ – The injury news Horsham FC supporters didn't want to hear ahead of season opener at Torquay

Hornets manager Dominic Di Paola confirmed that midfielder Lucas Rodrigues will miss the entirety of the 2026-27 season after injuring his cruciate in the home friendly against Eastbourne Town on July 18.

And, in a further blow, Di Paola revealed Horsham were unable to replace the Brazilian due to the club’s financial limitations.

He said: “We’ve lost Lucas Rodrigues for the season. He’s done his cruciate. He caught it in our new pitch. It’s awful for him and it’s awful for us.

“He was looking really good. He was in a good place. He’d come back really, really fit, exactly how he should have done, but he’s out for the season now. That brings a number of challenges for us but equally for him it is a sickener.

“We don’t have the funds to bring anyone in. We’re not in a position to replace him. We’ll see how we go but obviously it’s a challenge. We’re going to have to go month-to-month and see where we are – and hope Man United decide to enter the preliminary rounds of the FA Cup and we get them away from home so we can bring some money in!

“We have no money and we have no way of changing that. We might be able to get a couple of young’uns on the bench but we’re under no illusions how tough it’ll be with such a small squad in this league.”

The Hornets, who ended their pre-season programme with a 3-0 defeat at Worthing last weekend, kick-off their second-ever campaign at step two at last season’s beaten National League South finalists Torquay this Saturday.

The Gulls, who finished third in 2025-26, four points adrift of champions Worthing, are the bookies’ favourite to take home the title – and Di Paola admitted Horsham couldn’t have asked for a tougher start.

He continued: “I think they’re the bookies' favourites, but until you play a few games you never know.

“They haven’t really lost anyone. They’ve kept the majority of the squad from last year, who are all very good.

“They were very good last year. They probably underachieved in the first half of last year. If they had started better they probably would have done better.

“But you’ve got the likes of Ebbsfleet, Dagenham [who can win the title]. The list is endless.

“But it’s nice that we’re still in it [National League South] for another year. That’s brilliant for a small club like Horsham. It’s good that we can have another little bash at this level.

“It should be a good challenge, a good test. We couldn’t have got a harder first game – and I never win the first game of the season! I think I’ve won one in 14 years or something silly. My record on the first day is quite poor.

“You’d just like the worst team in the league in the first game of the season. We had Chelmsford last year, Hornchurch back-to-back when they were [Isthmian Premier] favourites.

“We always seem to pull someone quite hard and it always seems to be away – but we will go down there and give it our best shot. I think they [Torquay] only lost two games there last season so we’ve got nothing to lose.

“Our boys can play well and they’ve been really good in pre-season. We’ve played some lovely football with a limited squad. Hopefully we can piece it all together for Saturday and put in a good performance.”

Di Paola also confirmed that Horsham were ‘pretty threadbare’ going into their journey to Devon.

He said: “We’re pretty threadbare day one. It’s just going to depend on who recovers on time really. We’ve got a lot of ‘touch and go’s’ at the moment.

“We’ve got to be really careful because four or five of these boys haven’t recovered from long-term injuries. You’ve got [Charlie] Hester-Cook, Lee Harding, Meeky [Reece Myles-Meekums], Jake Elliott. We had to slowly build them up in pre-season.

“But someone like Jake Elliott is not really where he needs to be yet. Normally we would suggest he’d go out on loan but we don’t have the numbers. We’re trying to work out what to do because we’re not going to do him any good because he’s not quite there.

“The same with Meeks. He’s come back and had a bit of a setback, because you always do when you’ve been out long-term.

“But Ronan [Silva] arrived with an injury and he’s nearly there.”