By Gav Perry | Photo: Ian Brodie

A jubilant Ian Skinner spoke just after the final whistle of Saturday’s win against Bridlington Town saying “It was good to get a win at home where our form has been indifferent to say the least. Not often I publicly challenge the players but we did after last week’s performance and I thought in the first half today we started the game really well. We went 1-0 up following a really bright start but then conceded a really poor goal from an individual error. The reaction after that was good which saw us score another three goals in the half and overall all four goals in were very well worked and taken.”

Going into the interval with a three-goal advantage Skinner commented that “4-1 at half time is a difficult scoreline because you try and tell people that they need to come out second half and still work as hard and put as much energy and effort into it whilst knowing that we also play again in less than 48 hours’ time.”

When looking at the performance after the interval, Ian continued “We started the second half really bright again and scored another really good goal with a fantastic finish from Wilson to go 5-1 up. I’m disappointed with the second goal we conceded and that’s now seven games in a row where we have conceded two or more goals. We keep talking about making it difficult for the opposition to score against us, but we haven’t quite done it again today, but we’ll have to do it on Monday against a very good Hebburn side. The second half did get a bit scrappy, but when you win you win 5-2 at home, you’ve still got to be pleased overall and it’s now about how we recover and rest ahead of what will be a very tough game on Monday.”

Ian concluded by acknowledging that with Hebburn’s match being postponed today (Saturday), “you can only control the controllables and whilst they may be pleased to be going into their home game on Monday after a longer rest than us, we will also potentially look to freshen things up a little bit and utilise the squad”