By Julian Tyley
Manager Liam McIvor was obviously bitterly disappointed to see his side go down 5-1 at Birtley Town and was making no excuses for the performance. It was not an outcome anyone would have predicted after an uneventful but fairly even first half hour.
“There was nothing in it for the first 30 minutes; then it was kamikaze, the story of the week if I’m honest. I can’t dress it up anymore than it was. We created absolutely nothing; our goal came out of their mistake. We had one half chance in the first half from Cam Brewis. It was a good little passage of play between three or four of them and the shot, the keeper fumbled it a bit and it went wide but I think it was a good chance there. Apart from that I think their keeper’s been pretty quiet.”
Bailey Geliher, who suffered a bad injury in pre-season, has struggled to recover but played the whole of this game, which was at least one bit of good news. “Yes, he got 90 minutes which is probably one of the only positives of today. He’s had a bad time with injuries if I’m honest but getting 90 minutes this afternoon and 70 minutes the other night (at Whickham), it’s very positive for the remaining 6 games we’ve got left.”
The manager admitted that it’s probably a good thing that there’s a game coming up in three days which gives the players a chance to move on from Saturday’s poor performance. “We’ve got games coming up thick and fast and we need to bounce back. We’ve got Benfield on Tuesday, nothing on Saturday and then a massive derby on Monday (at North Shields) which we’ve got to get ourselves up for.”
With teams playing catch up after the numerous postponements during the winter there are games almost every Tuesday or Wednesday which limits the opportunity for training sessions. Liam explained “We’re not training as much at the moment because we’re playing twice a week. We’ll get a session in this week as we’ve a six day gap but you’ve got to try and rest players and manage it. Training between games is pretty hard and at this time of the season you’ve just got to keep lads fit, but we’ll get a session in between Benfield and the North Shields game.”
