By Brian Bennett

Ashington manager Nick Gray handed a debut to teenager Archie Small in Saturday’s Northern Premier League East Division away clash at Belper Town.

Gray has brought in the left sided player on a loan deal from Vanarama National League North outfit Darlington to give his team a bit more balance – and Durham-born Small is looking forward to his time at Woodhorn Lane.

“I was at Newcastle as a youngster then went to Hartlepool for two years and just signed for Darlington in the summer,” said the 18 year old, “I had a setback with a big injury at the start at Darlington but they’ve got a great group of lads there and manager Steve Watson and his assistant Terry Mitchell are brilliant.”

Small played for the 77 minutes at the Raygar Stadium on Saturday and said afterwards: “I’m really excited about coming to Ashington because I think it is a really good opportunity for me and I’m desperate to get a chance to play. I was happy with my performance at Belper today because it’s been a long time since I started a game.”

On first viewing, Small believes the Colliers – who are third from bottom – will climb the table: “I thought we played really well today and it’s just about putting those pieces together and clicking in the final third,” he said, “It’ll take time but I think it will come 100 per cent.”

Manager Gray said: “Charlie Exley has moved on and although Kyle Errington has done well since he came in, he’s right footed so we’ve looked to balance things up and I thought Archie did well. We’ve got him for a month and we’ll see where we go from there. It was his first game for us today and maybes he had a few nerves but I thought he did smashing.”

He continued: “It was difficult for Archie because he’s only had one training session to meet the lads. You could see that he tired a little bit and I took him off as I did with Harrison Clark and Jay Errington but the three of them hadn’t done anything wrong – it was just about putting fresh legs on.”