After today's home win against Oswestry Town we spoke to the management team, first of all 1st Team Coach Nick Farrington told us " today was an important win for the club, we've been through a tough run of games, conceding too many goals and not scoring enough ourselves. Dave and myself spoke to the lads over the last seven days and made it quite clear that the results against the top teams wouldn't define our season, but the results against the teams around us would, starting with today. Oswestry are a team we look up too, they suffered a poor start to the season, but turned it around with much of the same group of players.
We wanted to dictate the game, pressure them, but had to ride our luck early on before establishing a strong hold on the game after the half hour mark, with Saki ( Ahmadi ) creating some good openings.
At half time we empathised the importance of starting fast and staying switched on, which to their credit they did, they weathered the early pressure, while constantly looking dangerous on the counter attack with Tom ( Wakefield ), Saki, Dan ( Needham )and Louis ( Downs ) looking threatening, which led to the goals that sealed the game.
On reflection, we controlled the game well, keeping possession at good times.
We played with a very make shift back four, Jordan Bennion was outstanding at left back, whilst skipper Harvey Collins and Jack Warren were exceptional at centre back, but special mention must go to Matt Quimby who hasn't trained as much as we would have liked over the recent months, however he was excellent. It's now important that we build on today, starting on Thursday at training, we have a good squad of hungry young players, establishing an understanding of the league and when we're putting the players with the quality of Louis Downs on from the bench it shows the strength within the squad".
Manager Dave Dale added " the performance and result was a very welcome reward for the hard work and continued strength of character that the squad have shown during a run of very difficult games. Its very easy to criticise a run of seven games without a result, however the negativity given to our club is par for the course given the lack of understanding of the game, together with a lack of knowledge and understanding of a teams objectives for the season.
As a management team, we have continued to believe in the players we have, together with playing philosophy we all buy into. The result today will for some, be a surprise, however looking back at the those seven games in little more detail, four were away fixtures, Leek Town from the Evo-stick League ( Staffs Cup ), Silsden, the leaders of the NWCL, Alsager Town, Whitchurch Alport and Litherland Remyca at home who are all promotion contenders. Add to this the other two fixtures were against today's opponents and apart Silsden & Leek, the other games we competed extremely well in.
It's no surprise to me that we gained all the points today, I have a great management team in Nick and Rich, our players will develop further throughout the season and we should be very proud or their strength of character today".

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