After watching Whitley lose 1-0 to Crook Town despite having by far the better of the game joint manager Tony Fawcett summed up the feelings of all the Bay fans who were at Hillheads. “We’re really frustrated. We feel we’ve been the better team, we’ve dominated possession, we’ve created lots of chances in the first half in particular, and we’ve been caught with a counter punch. Sometimes that’s what happens in football, but we’re going to have to deal with it and move forward. It’s frustrating when that happens, the finishing, at times it’s the hardest thing to do but it’s a sickener when we haven’t scored after all that possession. It’s one of those days I guess. Injuries are building up but that’s what the squad’s for so I’m not going to use injuries as an excuse. We’ve got players close to fitness now and nearly coming back which will bolster the squad a little bit but we’re no different to anybody else in the league.”
Giving due credit to Crook he continued “I thought they defended really well. They were a unit, they were hard working, fearless and we told the lads before the game that we were going to have to work really hard. I feel that for their goal we haven’t worked as hard as we could have done to get back and try and stop it. It’s a lesson learned I guess. The league’s unforgiving. If you don’t take your chances in this league you’ll get punished by anybody in the league. Today’s just one of those days when we’ve not taken our chances and we’ve been punished... and deservedly so because we’ve not scored. As a team there was nobody who played poorly, but equally no one was at the top of their game so it was very much a run of the mill performance. This is a team game, we’re all disappointed and we’ve just got to stick together and we’ll be fine.”
