Report by Julian Tyley
After Whitley’s defeat on penalties in their FA Vase tie at Harrogate Railway, manager Jay Bates gave his thoughts on the game.
“Yes, disappointing result. I think for the first 45 they were all ‘in the coach’ still. It was very slow, very lacklustre, just nothing at all from any of the lads. I said at half time from 1 to 11 they were very poor and they were told it was just not good enough.
“But it’s difficult, you’re coming away, and you’re losing players in midweek you’ve got one of your main players Joe Robson who’s broken his foot on Tuesday then you’ve got Jakey Forster who’s away at a wedding and so we knew it was going to be tough.
“But we’ve got no excuses, that’s why we’ve got a squad, and they should be coming in and filling those places and today people didn’t. It was a poor performance to be fair.
“Second half it was a scrappy game. If you watch us we don’t lower our standards. When we play scrappy games we’re not playing fluent football.”
As for Harrogate he added “They worked hard, very hard, the two midfielders were grafters, they closed every space down that they could possibly close down.”
He readily accepted that Whitley created very little. “In the first 15, I think Mikel missed one that was caught under his foot. If you go in 1-0 down it’s a different story but to be fair the kid that scored their two goals, they were great finishes! Later on the second half the keeper made a great save off Kyle. To be fair that’s like a worldie save. If that goes in then we’ve got more chance of winning the game. I thought even when we got the one, we could get another and we did that in the 96th minute but it was just too late. You cannot just turn up for ten minutes of football.
“Looking back, to be fair to the keeper he made another great save from a free kick off Guy as well, but it was just too late when we scored. To be fair to them it would have been a robbery (if we’d won) Like I say, they played a good game. They’ve done well and we didn’t turn up today so we didn’t deserve to take anything from that game. When they won on pens we were saying fair play to them because we did not deserve (to win) that game.”
When it came to penalties, just about everyone would have backed Callum Larmouth to score but it didn’t happen for him on Saturday. “He scores goals, that’s what he does. If you were going to back anyone to score a pen it would be Cal but he went for the blast and the keeper’s managed to get it with his foot so, it is what it is.”
Jay explained that the players have been practising penalties in case they were needed in FA Cup or FA Vase ties. “For the last couple of training sessions we’ve finished on pens, so yes, in the last few we have practised pens at the end and when the five of them did step up, I was very confident in them.”
He explained the reasoning behind the inclusion of his brother Guy in the starting eleven for the first time this season. “It was because of numbers, but not just that. We play with a focal point in the ‘nine’. We’ve had Jakey Forster doing that in the last couple of games and he does it well and you can see we play better football when we’ve got a nine that can hold the ball up and play off him, but he’s not Jakey Forster, he hasn’t got the legs. As well as Guy coming in, we still had another couple of players missing so I had to bring in another centre half as well with Higgins, but with Guy, it was more to stabilise the team as such and play the formation that we want to play. To get the point man that’s what we needed to do.”
There was a great following of Bay fans, some travelling on the club coach and other who made their own way to Harrogate and Jay was full of praise for them. “The fans give up their Saturdays like the footballers do but they pay money to come and watch them and they travel around and you’ve seen it out there. I think that we had more fans than them to be perfectly honest. There was certainly a lot of Whitley Bay fans so we take our hats off to them and the lads waited for them to get around after the game so they could clap them. We want to encourage the lads to do that and get the fans behind them. When we’re at home you can see we’re getting the better results and when we’ve been up against it, the fans have given us that roar that keeps the lads going. It probably helped today, the fans kept going to the end and when we got that one, they gave the lads that little lift again and that’s probably how we got the second. A lot of fans were behind that goal and you could see!”
