Report by Julian Tyley
After watching his play off chasing side held to a goalless draw by fourth bottom Marske United, Whitley Bay manager Jay Bates was quick to praise the visitors for their performance on the night. “Yes, I’m disappointed but give credit to Marske. They’ve come here for a draw and that’s exactly what they’ve got. You could see the celebrations on the sidelines and what it meant to them.
“Full credit to them out on the pitch. I thought a lot of their players covered every blade of grass. I thought out of possession they were very hard to break down. They worked hard and like I said a couple of weeks ago, these teams (at the lower end of the table) aren’t easy any more. You look at Marske, then Thornaby’s just drawn against Guisborough. They’ve got new managers and they’ve got a new lease of life, a bit of fight about them. Today you could see it, they ran their socks off for 90 minutes so is it disappointing? It probably is that we didn’t create much, but did they create much? No so their plans worked for them to be truthful.”
Whitley started positively and created some good openings. “In the first 5 to 10 minutes Gildo went through and he hit the shot at the near post instead of going across the keeper. There were a couple of other half chances. Macca (Mackenzie Sharpe) six yards out headed it over the bar, and you think is it going to be our day? I think after the first 5-10 minutes they defended really well and I’m going to give credit to Marske. I think their defence was resilient and they defended really well and they’re going away happy.
“I think in the last few minutes Meeshi’s going in on goal and the defender’s got in front of him and that usually doesn’t happen. They defended really well so let’s give them credit.”
Commenting on the impact of the two games against West Allotment Celtic that were both called off at the last minute, Jay explained “What’s happened with West Allotment hasn’t helped us one bit. We’ve missed two weekends of football so you’re stop-starting. It’s been a lot of stop-starting in January and February with the weather and then you miss two Saturdays of football where the lads expect to get the game time in. It did look a little bit lethargic tonight. You can see Marske have been playing their games when at the same time we’ve been training, but training is not as good as match time.”
