Whitley won a closely fought game 2-1 at Seaham Red Star on Saturday with the teams having to contend with extremely hot conditions and Bay manager Nick Gray was happy to come away with a victory despite his side not being at their best.
“It wasn’t our greatest game to be honest. We know that. Credit to them (Seaham) they kept on going to the end so it was a good result for us.
“We know we need to work on things. We picked up three points when not playing to our best. You’ve got to take the positives; we know there are things to work on and I’m sure we will because we’ve got a good group in there.”
Nick felt that his team could have adapted better to the heat. “The key in that weather was looking after the ball. We’ve just got to look after the ball better. We worked hard but we just didn’t look after the ball well enough. We wouldn’t have had to work so hard out of possession if we’d looked after the ball better. This team, Seaham, they’re energetic; they work hard for each other. They’ll give teams a good game here and we’re happy and thankful for the three points. We’ll take the positives and work on things we need to, and that’s where we’re at. It’s a great three points in our eyes. There’s a lot to work on but listen, we’ll take it.
Lewis Suddick scored Whitley’s two goals and the manager was pleased with the quality of both of them. “The two goals we scored were two good goals. We moved the ball quickly and that’s what we’ve got to learn from them. I think sometimes we put ourselves under added pressure by playing in wrong areas, taking too many touches. The build up was slow especially first half. These are things we need to work on and we will do and take things on board.”
Looking at the opening few weeks of the season when Whitley have picked up 16 points and sit in fourth place he added. “It’s not a bad return after eight games. Now thankfully we’ve got two or three weeks where we’ve got free weeks to work on things in training.
“Listen we’ve come here, won 2-1 and I’ll take that. I’d rather not play well and win 2-1 rather than get beat 2-1! It’s a good group, still work in progress but we’ve got 4 or 5 new players and I’m really pleased with three points, so credit to the lads on a tough day. Some games last year if we’d played like that we might just have come away with a single point, if that.”
