Report by Julian Tyley
A trip to in-form West Auckland was always going to be a tough test but as manager Jay Bates pointed out, the 5-1 defeat, by far Whitley’s heaviest of the season, was due in no small part to being without half of his first choice starting eleven. He also felt that conceding three penalties in the first half, two of them highly controversial, had a major impact on the game.
“To be fair if you look at those who were missing today, it would have made lot of difference if they’d been available. We were missing players who have been in form. When you look at West Auckland, they’ve won their last four games, they scored five last week and three the game before that so we know they’re in form and they’re going to score goals.
“I’m not blaming anyone; we’ve got a squad there to do the job. It’s just that we’re missing big players out of that squad today so it was always going to be tough from the off, and it was about containing them as much as we can.
“Unfortunately we conceded early by switching off, but we got straight back into it with Gildo Da Silva’s first goal for the club. But then, I don’t know what the referee’s seen on the first penalty, there were people laughing. Anyway he misses it, great save by Mauro. Then there’s a penalty straight after that, which I don’t believe was a penalty and you wonder what’s going on. But the third one was obviously a pen so it’s three penalties in the space of about 20 minutes and it just disjoints the team.
“However, we were still at 2-1 at half time but then for it to be a 3-0 second half and lose 5-1, yes it was disappointing. I think players were switching off in the wrong areas.”
Midfielder Meeshi Kanda is a virtual ever present in the side and the manager commented on his absence. “Meeshi obviously makes a lot of difference in the middle of the park, he does a lot of running that we see but some don’t, and he breaks up the play. People don’t actually realise how much he does.
“You could see it was a bit of a backs to the wall game at times, attack versus defence and unfortunately for us they scored goals from their chances but we didn’t score from our chances. Unfortunately it didn’t fall for us but it fell for them, but it is what it is and they deserved it.
“I said to the lads to be not disheartened by the result, it happens sometimes. We’ve got to dust ourselves down, come together and go again, we win together, we lose together, we listen and take things onboard.”
The Newcastle Flooring Northumberland Senior Cup draw was made on Friday and Jay pointed out the positives of this to the players. “We’ve got a home Quarter Final to look forward to in the Senior Cup against North Shields. You never know, if we can win that, with the way the draw has worked out, there’s a good chance of getting to the Final at James Park.”
