By Brian Bennett
Andrew Cartwright fronted up to deliver the postmatch assessment from the Ashington camp following their 4-1 defeat against Sheffield FC at Woodhorn Lane on Tuesday night.
Charlie Exley scored what turned out to be a mere consolation goal for the Colliers with an honest and frank Cartwright saying that the visitors wanted it more than Ashington and labelled the performance by the Wansbeck side as ‘not good enough.’
“In football, people have played for long enough without somebody standing telling them whether their performance was good enough or not and I think the boys will all walk away from tonight knowing that it wasn’t good enough,” said Cartwright, “However you can’t sulk about it and we’ve just got to go again when we got to Consett on Saturday which for us now is our biggest game – the next game is always your biggest.”
Cartwright – who was in the dugout – continued: “In the first half, I thought we were passive. From our point of view, the first goal for Sheffield was sloppy but these things happen and its not one thing that defines the performance. I didn’t think we were aggressive enough in the times where we had to compete and in fairness to Sheffield who had had a long travel, it just looked like they wanted it more than we did which for me is something which can never be an excuse – that can never be the case. You can talk about us having no manager or about players who are injured but I think when you get beat because a team look they want it more, that nullifies everything else because that’s not good enough. For the boys I think that should dent any footballers’ pride. We are here because we love playing football but to go home after the game thinking that the other team have wanted it more, that’s something which has hurt me and I’m sure the boys will be hurting as well but listen, the top and bottom of it is you’ve got to go again. If you sulk about it, it’s not going to be productive at all so we’ve just got to dust ourselves down, train on Thursday and go to Consett on Saturday and we’ve got to perform. There’s got to be a reaction.”
Trailing 3-0, Ashington reduced the arrears through Exley and Cartwright added: “When Charlie netted from a set piece, momentum shifts are a big thing in any sport but did we really look like a threat? We had a couple of half chances and then they (Sheffield) scored a fourth on the break. They got the ball forward quickly and that wasn’t because they lumped it – they got the ball in good areas and hurt us and you can’t expect to win a game after conceding four goals. Probably everyone in our changing room knows that they weren’t good enough. If that happens you’ve got to pull your mate out and perform to get back into the game – and we just didn’t do that so we’ve got to be upset and I hope it puts fire into our bellies for Saturday.”
The interim management team of Gary Ormston, Paul Robinson and Cartwright have been in charge for five matches and the latter went on: “We started well after the departure of the joint coaches (Andy Coyles and Richie Hill) and I said recently that you can’t get too high when you do well or too low when you don’t. The last time I did a postmatch interview was a high point – this time it is a low point. However, we will turn up at Consett ready to play at 0-0 so we have got every opportunity to put something right and I’m hopeful that we will do that. We’ve got a top, top squad but we were so below par tonight. Fair play to Sheffield – they came up here and battered us really.”