Report by Julian Tyley
Whitley consolidated third place in the Ebac Northern League table with a 2-1 victory at local rivals Newcastle Benfield, to give their fans an early Christmas present.
Manager Jay Bates was happy with his side’s performance on another heavy pitch following the recent wet weather, “ It was a hard fought game. You know what you’re going to get when you come to Benfield. I think the league table is lying in a sense because they’re a good team and they’ve got some good individuals players.
“I managed to come up on Tuesday and watch their game against Morpeth (which they won on penalties in the Northumberland Senior Cup)and I thought for most of the game they were the better team against Morpeth.
“In the first half today we were probably the better team. We could have been 2-0 up at half time, but second half they came at us and in patches they were the better team so we had to adapt.
“Conditions are hard, you could see the lads slipping about but it’s the same for both teams and it’s an evener, but they tried to play football and we tried to play football and it got into a battle.
“You’ve seen a bit of everything out there. I’m not sure about the offside when they thought they’d scored, and then Robbie’s given away a penalty but then he’s gone up the other end and won a free kick and we’ve managed to score from the free kick.
Several players were missing for the this game as Jay pointed out, making the win all the more creditable. “We’ve got few out today, Kieren, Callum, Mikel, all natural starters and then you’ve got Macca (Mackenzie Sharpe)on the bench who could only last 20 minutes because he’s been sick and up all night so you can see it was a depleted squad.
“However, we go next week against North Shields and we’re going to have players back, too many for them all to make the squad, so we go into Boxing Day and if we give that same commitment and with the players who step in, we should be alright.
“Boxing Day is about the fans and giving them some enjoyment on the day and what bigger occasion then when we play North Shields!”
Recent games have seen several of the leading sides playing each other with gaps beginning to appear in what has been a very tightly packed top half of the table.
Jay commented “100%, the top six are pulling away a bit, in fact I think the top three are pulling away a little bit as well. Guisborough and Shildon (the top two) will slip up sometime, like we have. It’s a tough league, every game’s a hard game so there will be upsets on the way but at the end of the season hopefully we’re in among them.”
