By Brian Bennett

Ashington FC manager Ian Skinner admitted that Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at the hands of Thornaby wasn’t a game for the footballing purists – and highlighted that the deciding goal had materialised with his side ‘a bit disjointed.’

There was nothing to choose between the sides particularly in the second period of a mundane encounter until Ashington’s rhythm received a setback when defender Thomas Kalthoeber – who had received treatment in the first half for a shoulder injury- went down again which forced him off: “Obviously I’m disappointed that we have lost the game,” said Skinner afterwards, “It wasn’t much of a contest if I’m honest. It had a bit of an end of season/pre-season friendly about it for 60-65 minutes with both teams happy to have the ball and pass it without ever threatening the goal and I don’t think either goalkeeper has had a save to make in the first half.”

He continued: “After the break, obviously Thomas Kalthoeber has had to come off injured and as playing Ben Harmison as centre forward helps us to stretch the opposition, we’ve tried to not instantly drop him (Harmison) back in. We have asked Yannick Aziakonou to slot in at centre back and we probably became a bit disjointed which contributed towards the only goal of the game which I think was the only shot on target throughout. Thornaby have scored – and then for some reason the game burst into life for the last 20 minutes with flailing arms, horrible tackles, scuffles, a red card, yellow cards – and I don’t know how it all came about. Certainly I didn’t see it turning out that way but in the end, we probably haven’t threatened the Thornaby goal anywhere near enough whilst they’ve had one opportunity which they have taken. All in all it was not a great spectacle and not a game I’ll watch back too many times – and in a nutshell, it was a drab end of season game to be honest.”