Report by Julian Tyley
Speaking after the 1-1 draw against Guisborough Town, Whitley Bay manager Jay Bates revealed that it had been a struggle to name a full squad for the game. “If you’d asked me at 11 o’clock, I would have taken a point, considering we only had 12 men available at that stage.
“Lucas Lowery, (who is on a dual registration with National League Gateshead) was called into the Gateshead first team, one player’s away for the weekend, there are a couple of injuries and two lads are suspended so we were missing six key starters. Fortunately we were able to bring in Mikel Thompson and Shane Donaghey.
“With so many unavailable it’s like silly season but you’ve still got to field a team to go out to try and win a game and that’s what we did, we got a team out and tried to win the game. Is it a fair score? It probably is. We both had a couple of good chances and we had another good shout for another penalty. Late on Fin’s hit one high over the bar and their lad’s hit the bar. But we’re not composed in the final third, we’re just not taking them chances. Some of the build up play today was quite good to be fair.”
With so many players missing, Robbie Christie was brought back into the starting eleven after missing several games through injury. Jay commented “I thought he was not tight on their man first half for their goal, but we spoke at half time about driving forward and you could see in the second half when he drove at the ball he caused a lot of problems for Guisborough. He played really well second half, although he was still feeling his injury but it’s what we’ve got at the minute.”
Looking ahead, Whitley’s next two games are both away midweek fixtures, at Whickham and Birtley, teams battling to avoid relegation but as Jay pointed out, “You look at the results and every game is a hard game, teams at the bottom are winning games. Everyone’s picking up points now.
“You look at our next three games and would think they’re winnable, but when you look at today’s results they’re tough, every game’s tough.
“With players injured, suspended and with other commitments it’s difficult with all the chopping and changing but it’ll be like that for many teams at this time of the year.”
