Interview by Julian Tyley
After suffering a 1-0 defeat to Horden CW at Hillheads, Whitley Bay manager Jay Bates reflected on what was a frustrating evening for his injury depleted side.
“I’m disappointed; the lads are disappointed; the games are coming thick and fast and you can see how we’re carrying a lot of injuries.
“We’ve got three forwards now that are injured, so we’re trying to adapt with players in positions where they don’t usually play, especially the forwards and that’s two games with no goals so it’s not good.
“You bring in players at the beginning of the season to score goals and pre-season they were doing that. But now Alfie’s gone through two games carrying an injury, Jamie’s gone through three games carrying an injury and Macca’s injured as well. We’re putting Nathan up front and he’s got a little tweek, but he’s nearly getting through games and you can see he was working right to the end.”
Whitley have yet to keep a clean sheet through a competitive game and as Jay pointed out “The defence has been unsettled for the last couple of games.
“I’m not giving these as excuses because most teams have got injuries and people on holidays as well. It’s not clicking at the minute.
“Horden celebrated like they’d won the league. They know where we finished last season so every game at Whitley Bay’s going to be tough now. Teams are going to come here and look to upset us.”
Jay admitted that because of the prolonged dry weather, there are some very hard pitches which have contributed to the long list of injuries.
“To be fair, our pitch is decent at the minute but the one on Saturday was very hard and we took a lot of knocks.”
Referring to Josh Stewart’s bad injury at Newcastle Benfield, he commented “Josh’s ankle, which looks like ligament damage, we don’t know how long he’s going to be out. Then you look at the other lads who’ve come off injured. Very hard pitches are not suitable for this standard of football, but we’ve got to dust ourselves down and go again.
“Football’s about moments and in the first half we should have gone 1-0 up in a key moment, not taking a shot and trying to pass it into the goal then it’s a different game.
“Anyone’s beating anyone tonight, it’s going to be a tough league”
