Report by Julian Tyley
It was the turn of Whitley Bay’s new coach Gary Somerville to give the management reaction following yet another excellent performance, a 5-1 victory at Hillheads over newly promoted Thornaby,
Referring to the Bay players he enthused “They’re flying at the minute, they cannot seem to be doing anything wrong to be honest, everything’s coming off for us, defending well, playing through the middle well, doing everything that we need to do.”
A theme of recent games been scoring an early goal, and that was the case again in this game. “One thing we’re trying to instil in the lads is we’re trying to get a quick start. It puts the other team under pressure and gets us on the front foot straight away, so long may it continue.
“Some of the one-two’s we’re playing at the minute, playing through the thirds, playing one-two and bouncing over each other and then knocking it straight in.. we cannot really ask much more from the lads to be honest.”
A top class goal from Callum Larmouth seven minutes from time was the icing on the cake and as Gary said “Cal’s playing in the number 4 shirt game after game, doing the right things, and you saw it with that goal, going past one, going past two, then putting it in like he did, it was a great finish.
“It could have been a couple more to be honest. The way the lads are playing, the way they’re reacting to everything we’re saying, we cannot really ask much more from them.
“We’re getting lost for words because they’re doing everything right. We can’t really say anything until something goes wrong! Long may it continue!”
Captain Michael Scott did not play in this game. “He was feeling a bit under the weather, a bit of flu, so it was pointless putting him on with the squad depth we’ve got now. Every player that we’ve got can come in and do the job that needs to be done, so we’ve got to trust them, and we do trust them!”
Jack Errington did not come off the bench because as Gary explained “we’re winning the game quite comfortably so if he was a forward player you’d probably bring him on to give him minutes but if you’re a defender it’s a bit different where you think does he really need to come on? He could play but there’s no point in risking him when you don’t have to. You might as well give him more recovery time because there’s a couple of the lads going away on holiday in a few weeks so better to make sure he’s fit for then really.
“Games can’t come quick enough for us at the moment. Everything’s working so well, everything’s coming off.”
The long period of dry weather makes pitches very hard and as Gary pointed out “Grass pitches do need some water, pitches are really hard and teams are picking up injuries. “Luckily we’ve not picked up injuries that really hurt us. We’ve picked them up where we’ve got the depth in the squad. I think we’ve been quite lucky in that sense.”
Having the backing of a good size crowd is clearly helping the players. “Yes the lads can feel the crowd pushing them on when things are going well. Everybody’s behind each other, everybody’s high fiving, it’s all good and everybody smiles. it’s really good.”
