Interview by Julian Tyley
A 1-0 defeat at Birtley Town extended Whitley’s disappointing early season run, in a game that was overshadowed by yet another significant injury.
Assistant manager Barry Rizza acknowledged “It’s not a good start to the season. We need to get some points on the board. The first half, certainly the first 30 minutes, was not good enough. However we should still have been coming in 1-1 at half time in my opinion if Alfie had taken his chance.
Second half was better, we played ourselves into the game but obviously left ourselves a little bit insecure at the back because we were chasing the game and we were stretched.”
The main talking point came very early in the game when centre back Hugo McNicol suffered a serious head injury when he clashed with Birtley striker Nick Marley.
Barry explained “It was a bit scary really because there was a clear head knock and everybody could see but the ref tried to play the game on. The rules are the rules, a head knock, stop the game immediately!”
There was a delay of more than six minutes while McNicol, motionless on the ground, was given treatment.
“You could see he (Hugo) was in distress. He’s a young lad. Hopefully he’s ok. I think he’s got a bit of concussion and he’s off to hospital to be checked out.
“The squad’s really thin at the moment with injuries just racking up game after game and that’s not an excuse, it’s still 11 v 11, but once that final whistle goes we’ve got to get the players in for treatment and we’ve got to look at maybe adding a few to the squad.”
When it comes to bringing in new players, Barry pointed out the criteria. “ It’s three fold, it’s bringing in the right people; people that are available ; people that want to come and are right for the group that we’ve got. We are working behind the scenes and hopefully we’ll have an addition or two in the next week.
“Listen we’ve been in this position before, as a management group we’ve been at a team where they’ve haven’t had points on the board until November and we’ve finished 5th in the league, so we’re not panicking. We just need time to try and get it right.”
To their credit the lads kept going right to the end. I think that’s part of the DNA of the lads we have, we can’t fault their effort. We just need that little bit of quality and hopefully that comes with sharpness.”
