By Brian Bennett
Ashington joint head coach Richie Hill remained upbeat despite back to back defeats for his side in the Northern Premier League East Division.
The Wansbeck side went down 2-1 against Bishop Auckland in their first home game of the new campaign then after a run of three encounters in the Emirates FA Cup and Isuzu FA Trophy, suffered a 2-0 defeat away to Dunston UTS on Bank Holiday Monday.
Dunston’s marksmen were Sado Djalo and ex Colliers striker Dale Pearson.
However Hill was very impressed with Ashington’s second half showing at the UTS Stadium and predicted that his outfit will be ‘absolutely fine’ over the course of the season and ‘win more points than they won’t.’
“I thought first half against Dunston we were disappointing with and without the ball,” he said afterwards, “I didn’t think we laid a glove on them to be fair and their ‘keeper hasn’t had anything to do. I’m not one for making excuses but at the moment we are suffering with quite a few injuries and today we had three or four players who wouldn’t normally have played because they were nursing knocks so credit to them.”
He continued: “We had a chat at half time and didn’t think we were doing what we are good at – like getting on the ball and getting certain people on the half turn – and I thought second half we were excellent up to the final third. People were missing chances to shoot and we just weren’t clinical enough when we got into some good situations. Whilst the score was 1-0, I thought we got the upper hand and we had a chance – then they (Dunston) counter attacked us which led to their second goal which basically killed us and from there on it was always going to be difficult to get back into the game.”
For the start of the second period, Ashington introduced Paul Van-Zandvliet and Hill added: “Paul was involved in a very, very hard boxing match the previous night but I thought he showed some great character when he came on and made a big difference. Overall we’ve got to be competitive; improve on our first half display today and match our second half performance as well as being a little more clinical in the final third. If we continue to play like we did in the second 45 minutes we’ll be absolutely fine and we’ll win more points than we won’t.”