Report by Julian Tyley
Whitley Bay manager Jay Bates was obviously delighted with the team’s 1-0 victory at Kendal but readily acknowledged the effect of the early red card for the home side.
“They’re a good team Kendal. We knew that and I think the sending off helped us massively because they were controlling the game in the first ten minutes until the sending off. I felt it was as if we were still on the coach for the first 10- 15 minutes, but even after the sending off they were still hard to break down. Fortunately for us in the last 15 minutes Regan’s come on and scored a great goal.”
Discussing the controversial decision to send off the Kendal captain Niall Cowperthwaite, Jay said “I think he (the referee) had two decisions he could have made. He could have let it go and given the penalty and give a yellow card or I think the double jeopardy comes in and he brings it back and sends him off and gives a free kick outside the box. It probably was a penalty but we’ll take the red card because we took the three points.
He admitted that Whitley had got a bit lucky with a possible handball decision in the first half. “You could see out there a lot of the players were slipping around and I think Meeshi handled it. But it’s the same for both teams.”
As for the incident involving the Kendal goalkeeper and Mackenzie Sharpe just before the interval, Jay felt it was a 50/50 ball. “The ball’s there to be won, it wasn’t the keeper’s ball, the keeper’s slid out with his hands, Mackenzie’s slid in with his feet. But when you’ve got the crowd behind that goal, there was always going to be a reaction and there was some pushing and shoving the box after that, to try and get him (Sharpe)sent off but the ref held his own and gave a yellow card.”
“It’s six points and two clean sheets this week. The coach journey is difficult on those legs but we’ll take that.”
Going on to pay credit to Kendal he added “They’re a very good team; they score a lot of goals, they’re very busy. Their two wide men are very quick and direct. The number nine scores a lot of goals. They’re particularly good a home.”
The win takes Whitley up to 7th in the table, within striking distance of the play offs. “We’re in and around it. We knew this season wasn’t going to be easy but we’ve competed in a lot of games, however we’ve let ourselves down in a lot of games as well."
New signing Graham Williams, brought in the previous day, impressed fans and the manager. “What you get with Graham Williams is he’s a no nonsense defender, he’s a leader, a voice out there, something we’ve probably missed; and with us missing Micky Scott for three games and with Joe Robson going to Heaton Stan, Graham was an ideal replacement. For me he was one of the men of the match today for his leadership qualities. He won everything in the air, got it down, played nothing fancy, just put it into the right areas and has done all the defensive side of things and that’s how we’ve kept a clean sheet.”
